'^mM  si*\^>^ 


BV  4501  .M248  1907 
McGee,  James  Ellington. 
Jesus,  the  world  teacher 


JESUS:  THE  WORLD  TEACHER 


Jesus:  The  World  Teacher 


By 


JAMES  ELLINGTON  McGEE 


CINCINNATI:    JENNINGS  AND  GRAHAM 
NEW    YORK:    EATON    AND    MAINS 


CONTENTS 

Chapter  Page 

I.  Practical  Idealism,        -       -       -      9 

II.  Progressiveness,         .        -        -        41 

III.  Symbolism, 77 

IV.  Religion, 105 

V.  Strategy, 135 

VI.  Conservatism,      -        -       -       -       165 

VII.  Ethics,      -       -       -       -       -       -  189 

VIII.  Innovation, 225 

IX.    MODERNNESS, 257 

X.  epilogue, 287 


Chapter  I. 
PRACTICAL  IDEALISM. 


To  the  religious  mind,  this  universe  is  not  merely  a  sys- 
tem of  laws  and  an  infinite  force  acting  in  accordance  with 
them;  nor  is  it  an  impersonal  idea  evolving  its  hidden  rich- 
ness into  the  explicitness  of  concrete  existence  :  it  is  the 
personal  life  of  God  our  Father  in  progressive  expression 
and  realization. 

Ideas  are  mighty,  because  they  are  aspects  of  the  living 
truth;  because  they  serve,  in  their  v/ay,  to  conduct  the  mind 
to  the  recognition  of  the  vital  fact.  Ideas  would  be  sufficient 
if  the  universe  were  founded  upon  ideas  and  not  upon  the 
living  God ;  or,  if  man  were  a  being  of  merely  intellectual 
or  contemplative  powers,  and  not  a  nature  endued  with  pro- 
found sympathies  and  one  that  can  neither  rest  in  thought 
nor  in   feeling,    but  in  the    perfection   that   comes   through 

achievement. 

—GEORGE  A.  GORDON. 


I  believe  in  God,  I  believe  in  God  with  all  my  soul,  be- 
cause this  world  is  inexplicable  without  Him  and  explicable 
with  Him;  and  it  was  Jesus  Christ  that  showed  me  that  this 
world  demanded  God  and  was  inexplicable  without  Him. 

—PHILLIPS  BROOKS. 
10 


PRACTICAL  IDEALISM. 


Idealism  is  mental  salvation.  Thought 
utterly  perishes  if  we  repudiate  the  ideal. 
It  is  the  ideal  which  saves  the  mind  from 
putrefaction,  as  the  soul  saves  the  body  from 
putrefaction. 

The  unthinking  world  has  had  its  frolic 
at  the  expense  of  the  ideal;  nevertheless  the 
only  saving  grace  that  has  been  manifest  in 
the  thoughts  of  men,  from  the  beginning  of 
time  to  the  present,  has  issued  from  the  ideal. 
Pitiable,  indeed,  would  be  the  condition  of 
humankind  if  idealism  was  not  regnant. 

Idealism  declares  the  primacy  of  spirit. 
It  affirms  the  subordination  of  matter.  It  at- 
taches itself  to  the  unseen.  It  is  a  pro- 
nounced believer  in  the  immanence  of  God. 
It  does  not  declare  the  universe  to  be  a  blind 

11 


12  Jesus:  The  ^VoRLD  Teacher. 

mechanism.  It  does  not  apotheosize  matter, 
force,  and  motion.  It  sees  no  causality  in 
things.  It  discerns  no  form  nor  content  in 
the  universe  outside  of  free  intelligence. 

The  idealist  makes  consciousness  and  its 
data  fundamental.  He  builds  no  conclusion 
on  the  finality  of  sense  data.  His  eyes,  his 
ears,  his  hand,  his  tongue,  his  sense  of  smell, 
are  not  for  him  the  source  of  authority.  In 
his  contact  with  the  sensible  world  he  gives 
to  mind  the  place  of  leadership.  The  idealist 
does  not  deny  sensuous  facts;  but  he  makes 
the  sensuous  fact  depend  upon  the  spiritual 
fact.  The  table,  the  chair,  the  house,  the  sea, 
the  mountain,  hunger,  thirst,  gravity,  have  a 
validity  in  the  sense-world ;  but  their  validity, 
declares  the  idealist,  is  rooted  and  grounded 
in  spirit. 

The  materialist  issues  on  occasion  a  pro- 
nunciamento  of  independence,  and  declares 
the  finality  of  the  sense- world ;  but  legitimate 
thought  and  experience  effectually  contradict 
him.  The  materialist  laughs  at  the  gossamer- 
thread  theories,  at  the  day-dreaming,  at  the 


Practical  Idealism.  13 

star-gazing  of  tlie  idealist,  ostensibly  obliv- 
ious of  the  fact  that  the  earth  on  which  he 
stands  is  reclining  in  the  arms  of  soft  air, 
and  spinning  through  space  at  a  thousand 
miles  an  hour,  dragging  him  with  it— he 
knows  not  how,  nor  where.  Materialism  for- 
gets that  the  locomotive,  the  steamship,  the 
modern  skyscraper  building,  are  the  projec- 
tion in  steel,  in  iron,  in  brass,  in  stone,  of 
angles  acute,  right,  reflex,  straight;  of  cir- 
cles, of  quadrants,  of  semi-circles,  of  parallel- 
ograms; in  fact,  of  the  science  of  geometry, 
of  mechanics,  and  every  other  sphere  of  pure 
thought.  And  what  is  true  of  the  locomotive, 
of  the  steamship,  of  the  modern  building,  is 
true  of  all  material  construction,  whether 
plow-points,  pyramids,  mountain  ranges, 
watery  plains,  spheres,  or  hemispheres. 

The  idealist  reckons  the  world  as  phenom- 
enal, not  ontological  reality;  as  appearance, 
not  substance.  Every  material  force  he  ac- 
cepts inductively,  not  metaphysically.  He 
trusts  the  world  as  a  sense  display.  He  does 
not  trust  it  as  an  ultimate.    ^^In  the  divine 


14  Jesus:  The  World  Teacher. 

order,''  says  ca  great  modern  votarist  of 
idealism,  ''intellect  is  primary,  nature  sec- 
ondary. That  which  once  existed  in  intellect 
as  pure  law  has  now  taken  body  as  nature. 
It  existed  already  in  the  mind  in  solution; 
now  it  has  been  precipitated,  and  the  bright 
sediment  is  the  world." 

The  idealist  does  not  respect  labor  or  its 
products  otherwise  than  as  a  faithful  repre- 
sentation of  the  laws  of  being.  Government 
he  does  not  respect,  only  to  the  extent  of  its 
assertion  of  the  laws  of  conscience.  No 
thing,  whether  Church,  school,  reform,  or 
home,  commands  his  consideration  save  as  it 
voices  the  mind  of  the  ever-present,  ever- 
working  God.  The  only  salvation  of  the 
world  mentally  is  the  headship  of  the  ideal. 
What  there  is  of  permanent  beneficence  and 
beauty  in  the  world  of  thought  and  achieve- 
ment finds  in  idealism  its  parentage. 

II. 

Idealism,  however,  of  the  abstract  quality 
is  subject  to  drastic  stricture.    It  has  cast  a 


Practical  Idealism.  15 

shadow  of  density  upon  the  idealism  that  is 
of  abiding  and  indispensable  worth.  Ab- 
stract idealism  renders  itself  impotent 
through  its  devotion  to  theory  instead  of  life. 
It  is  of  the  rigor  and  vigor  type.  It  is  words 
without  work. 

Practical  idealism  alone  is  legitimate.  It 
is  thought  plus  will.  It  does  not  rest  in  con- 
ception, but  completes  itself  in  causality. 

Abstract  idealism,  dealing  with  theory 
rather  than  life,  converts  flesh-and-blood  men 
and  women  into  hypothetical  creatures,  and 
hence  is  of  no  abiding  value  in  the  solution 
of  life's  problems.  The  cloistered  saint  is  a 
dumb  significant  for  the  suffering  and  sin- 
ning souls  that  press  the  highway. 

Of  similar  non-value  is  the  thinker  who, 
in  anchoretic  solitude,  expends  himself,  and 
submerges  in  Lethean  waters  his  practical 
relatedness  to  his  brother  man.  Personal 
aloofness  is  of  no  worth  to  humankind, 
whether  in  scholar,  saint,  or  sage.  Points  of 
tangency  with  all  men  must  be  discovered 
and  utilized  if  our  life  is  to  be  a  benefaction 


16  Jesus  :  The  World  Teacher. 

rather  than  a  malefaction.  The  democracy 
of  culture  is  as  essential  for  the  common 
weal  as  political  or  religious  democracy. 
The  idealist  who  does  not  see  that  will  alone 
gives  effectiveness  to  thought  is  blind  to  the 
overtowering  fact  in  individual  and  racial 
experience.  The  thinker  minus  causal  effi- 
ciency deceives  himself.  His  otherness  is 
found  in  him  who  hears  the  good  word  and 
does  it  not. 

The  abstract  idealist  insists  upon  a  dis- 
proportion between  his  faculties  and  the  mo- 
mentary aspects  of  daily  life.  Because  of 
this  imaginary  disproportion  he  gives  him- 
self to  the  creation  of  vagaries  which  inevi- 
tably terminate  in  intellectual  and  moral 
ennui.  The  Brook  Farm  Community  in  New 
England  during  the  past  century  was  a  strik- 
ing illustration  of  abstractionism  and  its 
myopic  outlook  on  practical  life.  To  these 
Johns-a-Dreams  the  differentiations  of  social 
effort  were  unspeakable  drudgeries.  The 
hymeneal  bonds  between  perception  and  ar- 
ticulation they  did  not  celebrate.     The  epi- 


PRACTICAL  Idealism.  17 

thalammm  of  doctrine  and  deed  they  did  not 
chant.  Life  for  them  was  without  an  objec- 
tive. They  could  see  nothing  in  Boston,  New 
York,  or  elsewhere,  that  was  worthy  of  their 
hand,  head,  or  heart.  The  labor  of  shop,  of 
store,  of  farm;  the  competitions  of  the  mar- 
ket, the  threatening  crises  of  government,  the 
possible  transformation  of  natural  and  moral 
crudities  into  the  full-blown  beauty  of  a 
Christian  civilization,  had  for  them  no  word 
of  argument.  They  clamored  for  something, 
they  knew  not  what,  proportionate  to  their 
imagined  powers.  The  opportunities  and 
achievements  of  statecraft,  of  commerce,  of 
art,  of  invention,  of  education,  of  religion,  ad- 
dressed them  with  momentary  frequency,  but 
the  ceaseless  detonations  of  their  colossean 
conceit  made  impossible  the  hearing  of  any 
practical  voice. 

III. 

But  the  Brook  Farmers  had,  in  their  day, 
colleagues  who  were  not  nominally  in  their 
community.     These  colleagues  were  in  the 

2 


18  Jesus:  The  World  Teacher. 

schools,  in  the  churches,  in  business,  in  the 
home,  on  the  farm,  and  elsewhere.  And  from 
their  loins  has  sprung  a  numerous  progeny, 
who  are  in  evidence  to-day.  Educationally,  a 
few  decades  since,  the  day  was  when  the  ab- 
stractionist succeeded  in  making  mind-culture 
synonymous  with  what  Carlyle  calls  Do-Noth- 
ingism.  The  collegian  was  a  man  of  leisure, 
not  a  man  of  work.  If  any  eifort  marked 
his  career,  it  was  confined  exclusively  to  a 
profession.  He  looked  upon  himself  as  the 
favorite  of  gods  and  demi-gods.  But,  happily 
for  the  social  body,  a  better  day  is  at  hand. 
The  educated  man  is  now  appraised  on  the 
basis  of  his  productive  capacity.  If  he  is  not 
a  producer,  the  judgment  of  society  is:  If  a 
man  work  not,  neither  shall  he  eat. 

The  prejudice  against  the  labor  of  the 
farm,  the  shop,  the  store,  the  home,  is  in  the 
throes  of  dissolution,  and  in  this  year  of 
Christendom  the  trained  mind  is  finding  a 
field  for  its  highest  capacity  in  what  the  ab- 
stract idealist  denominates  menial  pursuit. 
The  abstract  idealist  is  not  yet  a  negligible 


Practical  Idealism.  19 

factor,  however,  in  the  educational  world, 
relative  to  the  making  of  mental  opportu- 
nity the  property  of  all  the  peoples  of  the 
earth. 

The  actually  inferior  members  of  the  so- 
cial unit  have  felt,  and  are  feeling  to-day, 
burdensomely,  the  absence  of  this  opportu- 
nity. The  Mongolian,  the  Malayan,  the  Afri- 
can, and  multitudes  of  European  peasants, 
have  not  yet  received  from  their  more  fortu- 
nate brothers  their  inalienable  mental  rights. 
As  abstractionists  we  palliate  our  delin- 
quency on  the  ground  that  their  insufferable 
mental  obtuseness  and  the  gigantic  propor- 
tions of  their  brute  force  practically  nullify 
our  duty.  This  position,  however,  is  argii- 
mentum  ad  invidiam.  God  made  these  appar- 
ently inferior  peoples,  men  and  women.  We 
can  not,  without  impugning  the  Infinite  Mind, 
make  them  less. 

^'Ignorance  is  the  curse  of  God;  knowl- 
edge the  wing  wherewith  we  fly  to  heaven," 
is  the  word  of  truth  and  soberness  spoken  by 
the  myriad-minded  Saxon  poet.    If  the  igno- 


20  Jesus  :  The  \A^orld  Teacher. 

ranee  of  any  man  is  mastodonic  in  its  outline, 
our  duty  to  him  is  not  lessened,  but  increased. 
The  formidableness  of  another's  brute  force 
need  excite  no  fears.  The  philosophy  of  his- 
tory ceaselessly  afl&rms  that  the  wielding  of 
the  brute  force  of  any  man  or  body  of  men 
is  in  inverse  ratio  to  the  cultivation  of  mind 
and  heart.  The  man  of  mental  and  moral 
refinement  possessing  great  muscular  vigor, 
invariably  adopts  the  words  of  Shakespeare's 
Isabella,  '^0,  it  is  excellent  to  have  a  giant's 
strength,  but  it  is  tyrannous  to  use  it  like  a 
giant!" 

The  negro  problem  in  our  own  country, 
the  ghost  that  will  not  down,  will  find  many 
of  its  repulsive  and  stubborn  elements  elimi- 
nated when,  as  a  national  body  politic,  we 
diffuse  mental  and  ethical  light.  It  is  almost 
invariably  the  densely  ignorant,  sullen  son 
of  Ham  that  inflames  the  deadly  passion  of  a 
community.  With  his  limited  outlook,  he 
does  not  esteem  the  upper  ranges  of  life  nor 
foresee  the  inevitable  ultimate  of  his  crime. 
Mind  and  heart  consummately  cultivated  are 


Practical  Idealism.  21 

the  only  stay  of  the  social  body.  If  they 
can  not  prevent  and  remedy  every  conceiv- 
able ill  among  men,  the  issue  is  hopeless. 
The  abstract  idealist  gives  ns  no  help  in  the 
solution  of  racial  problems.  His  dwelling- 
place  is  in  the  clouds.  The  theater  of  human 
passion  and  progress  is  to  him  terram  incog- 
nit  a^n. 


IV. 

The  Brook  Farmers  have  their  descend- 
ants in  political  life.  They  are  chronic  ani- 
madverters.  They  see  nothing  of  good  in  af- 
fairs political.  They  ignore  their  registra- 
tion and  suffrage  duties.  They  are  in  ab- 
sentia in  ward,  municipal,  county,  and  other 
political  gatherings.  And  yet  they  protest 
loud  and  long  against  governmental  evils. 
Their  political  maxim  is :  The  best  or  nothing. 
The  less  of  two  evils  they  look  upon  as  the 
output  of  the  pit.  With  Pharisaic  demeanor 
they  exclaim,  ^'What  fellowship  has  right- 
eousness with  unrighteousness?    What  com- 


22  Jesus  :  The  World  Teacher. 

miinion  has  light  with  darkness?''  Only  as 
their  gossamer-thread  doctrines  find  adoption 
are  they  active  for  the  common  weal. 

The  Church  of  Jesus  Christ,  as  a  body,  is 
only  recently  disengaging  itself  from  this 
hypocritical  position.  The  direction  of  the 
ward,  the  city,  the  State,  has  for  time  imme- 
morial been  criminally  delegated  to  the  sons 
of  Belial.  As  a  resultant  a  burdensome  po- 
litical curse  has  rested  upon  the  shoulders  of 
the  civilized  world.  But  with  the  Church  of 
Jesus  Christ  as  a  body  in  array  against  po- 
litical infamies,  becoming  an  offensive  in- 
stead of  a  defensive  force,  practical  instead 
of  theoretical,  governmental  rightness  is  im- 
minent. 

A  workable  maxim  that  commends  itself 
to  us  as  a  causal  unit  rather  than  an  abstract 
idealism  is:  The  partially  good,  if  not  the 
wholly  good ;  the  better  rather  than  the  good ; 
the  best  rather  than  the  better. 

Idealism  minus  will  has  wrought  and  is 
working  detrimentally  in  the  sphere  of  reli- 
gion.    This   abstraction   is   evident   in   the 


Practical  Idealism.  23 

limited  interpretation  which  we  give  to  the 
character  of  God  and  His  kingdom. 

The  Deism  which  cast  a  shadow  like  the 
Egyptian  night  upon  the  sixteenth,  seven- 
teenth, and  eighteenth  centuries  of  European 
life  is  still  existent  to  a  lamentable  degree  in 
the  thought  of  the  Church  of  God.  God  with 
us,  God  in  us,  God  working  through  us,  is 
still  a  doctrine  of  nebulous  outline.  We  be- 
lieve the  Infinite  Presence  and  Power  to  be 
existent  in  the  organic  life  of  the  visible 
Church.  But  we  often  express  our  doubt  as 
to  the  ever-presence  of  the  Infinite  Mind  and 
Will  in  the  American  Congress,  the  British 
Parliament,  the  Japanese  Diet,  despite  the 
ethical  quality  of  the  enacted  legislation.  We 
make  merry  with  the  notion  that  in  the  legiti- 
mate transactions  of  the  New  York  Stock 
Exchange,  of  the  Philadelphia  Bourse,  of  the 
Bank  of  England,  of  the  Hong  Kong  Custom 
House,  God  is  the  besetting  and  inspiring 
reality. 

In  the  playfulness  of  school  children;  in 
the  gentle  whisperings  of  the  south  wind ;  in 


24  Jesus  :  The  World  Teacher. 

the  soft  embraces  of  the  atmosphere;  in  the 
inspiration  and  expiration  of  plants  and  ani- 
mals ;  in  the  diastole  and  systole  of  the  human 
heart;  in  the  metamorphosis  of  sun,  rain, 
sleet,  snow,  dull  earth,  and  furious  storm 
into  the  perfume  and  beauty  of  the  carnation 
pink ;  in  the  continuous  emergence  of  savage 
peoples  into  civilized  life;  in  fact,  of  every 
conceivable  phenomenon  that  momentarily 
and  diurnally  presents  itself  to  our  mind's 
eye,  we  are  laggards  in  avowing  the  ever- 
present  efficiency  of  God  our  Father.  His 
kingdom  we  often  invest  with  a  limitation 
identical  with  that  of  the  first-century  Jew. 
We  make  it  pre-eminently  traditional,  cere- 
monial, temporal,  spatial.  What  our  fathers 
thought  becomes  for  us  a  mental  Ultima 
Thule.  As  abstract  idealists  we  convert  the 
kingdom  of  God  into  a  thought  conformity 
which  impedes  all  intellectual  progress  and 
militates  greatly  against  moral  progress. 
The  Pegasean  wing  we  would  clip,  the  assidu- 
ous experimenter  we  would  eye  askant, 
and  the  profound  speculator  we  would  assign 


Practical  Idealism.  25 

to  Milton  ^s  '^  limbo  large  and  broad,  xlie  para- 
dise of  fools.'' 

We  insist  upon  Augustine,  upon  Calvin, 
upon  Wesley,  upon  Edwards,  becoming  the 
mouthpieces  for  the  day  that  now  is.  In  so 
doing  we  transform  ourselves  from  free  and 
active  mental  agents  into  senseless  automata. 
In  so  doing  we  subscribe  to  the  Deistic  doc- 
trine that  God  spoke  in  their  day  to  them, 
but  does  not  speak  in  our  day  to  us.  Such  a 
doctrine  is  intolerably  fatuous.  What  there 
is  of  universal  quality  in  the  words  and  deeds 
of  Augustine,  of  Calvin,  of  Wesley,  of  Ed- 
wards, and  other  master  spirits  of  the  past, 
we  should  accept  with  devout  thanksgiving; 
but  that  which  they  said  and  did  admitting  of 
circumscription,  we  should,  as  present-day 
children  of  the  Most  High,  repudiate.  Intel- 
lectual strait-jackets  are  fitting  apparel  for 
myopic  thinkers,  who  make  of  God  and  His 
world  a  blind  and  purposeless  mechanism, 
but  they  assuredly  are  not  suitable  for  men 
and  women  who  believe  in  the  immanent, 
ever-working  God.     Love,  truth,  righteous- 


26  Jesus:  The  World  Teacher. 

ness,  the  basilar  principles  of  the  kingdom  of 
heaven,  have  nothing  to  fear  from  any  legiti- 
mate activity  of  the  finite  mind. 

Abstract  idealism  is  a  disavowal  of  the 
present-day  causal  efficiency  of  the  Infinite 
Spirit.  The  abstractionist  gives  to  ceremony 
a  value  that  is  fictitious.  He  forgets  that  a 
whole  popedom  of  forms  may  be  uplifted  and 
vivified  by  a  single  pulsation  of  virtue,  but 
by  nothing  else.  He  forgets  that  regenerate 
and  serviceable  personality  is  of  primal 
worth  in  the  kingdom  of  God.  The  abstract 
idealist  assigns  a  temporal  primacy  to  the 
kingdom  of  righteousness  on  the  Sabbath- 
day,  to  Good  Friday,  to  Easter-day,  to  Whit- 
suntide, to  the  Passover  and  Pentecostal 
feasts,  to  days  of  fasting  and  prayer;  but 
he  withdraws  this  primacy  on  other  days. 

Spatially  he  is  a  vociferous  home-mission 
votarist.  In  his  army  of  good  words  he  has 
not  marshaled  these:  '^He  shall  have  domin- 
ion from  sea  to  sea,  and  from  the  river  unto 
the  ends  of  the  earth;''  ^^Go  ye  into  all  the 
world,  and  preach  the  gospel  to  every  erea- 


Practical  Idealism.  27 

ture;''  ^^Ye  shall  be  witnesses  unto  Me  unto 
the  uttermost  part  of  the  earth. ' ' 

V. 

Practical  idealism  is  thought  made  effect- 
ual. It  is  word  and  work  in  happy  and  bene- 
ficial consonance.  It  is  the  indisputable 
demonstration  of  the  proposition :  Experience 
does  not  contravene  thought,  but  gives  to  it 
an  abiding  value.  Practical  idealism  is 
ethical  and  spiritual  salvation.  The  Incarna- 
tion of  the  Son  of  God  is  the  perpetual  af- 
firmation of  this  thesis. 

Jesus  gave  no  countenance  to  abstract 
idealism.  He  dwelt  primarily  in  the  realm 
of  the  spirit,  but  from  this  realm  He  issued 
continuously  for  the  expenditure  of  Himself. 
To  things  material  He  assigned  no  sover- 
eignty. He  used  them  as  servants  subject 
to  His  beck  and  call.  He  did  not  give  to 
things  an  existence  in  themselves,  but  posited 
their  existence  in  and  for  intelligence.  The 
finite  spirit,  founded  in  and  transcended  only 
by  the  Infinite  Spirit,  is  the  lawful  master  of 


28  Jesus  :  The  World  Teacher. 

the  universe,  is  Jesus'  virtual  word.  The  phe- 
nomenal reality  of  the  sensuous  life  Jesus 
did  nofc  deny.  He  did  deny  its  metaphysical 
reality.  Materialism  with  its  unutterable 
crassness  found  no  lodgment  in  His  thought. 
He  saw  the  world  as  the  perpetual  forth- 
going  of  Divine  causality.  Free  and  purpo- 
sive intelligence  He  discerned  everywhere. 
The  causal  efficiency  which  He  beheld  in 
heaven,  in  earth,  in  sea,  He  denominated 
God. 

Jesus  is  the  greatest  of  the  world's  think- 
ers. He  is  the  Teacher  of  teachers.  The  suc- 
ceeding centuries  have  exclaimed,  ^^  Never 
man  spake  like  this  man;''  ^VHe  speaks  as 
one  having  authority,  and  not  as  the  scribes." 
He  infinitely  transcends  ancient  and  modern 
humanists.  The  educational  voice  of  the  civ- 
ilized world  hastens  to  bear  this  witness: 
** Whosoever  heareth  the  sayings  of  Jesus, 
and  doeth  them,  shall  be  likened  unto  a  wise 
man  who  builded  his  house  upon  a  rock;  and 
the  rain  descended,  and  the  floods  came,  and 
the  winds  blew  and  beat  upon  that  house; 


Practical  Idealism.  29 

and  it  fell  not;  for  it  was  founded  upon  a 
rock."  In  like  manner  speaks  the  commer- 
cial voice,  the  governmental  voice,  the  lit- 
erary voice,  the  voice  of  religion. 

Jesus  was  not  only  a  thinker,  but  also  a 
doer.  In  Him  there  was  a  correspondence  of 
doctrine  and  deed  which  no  personality  of 
any  generation  can  parallel.  This  incompar- 
able harmony  of  thought  and  action  gives  to 
Him,  without  the  possibility  of  a  stricture, 
the  appellation,  Practical  Idealist. 

VI. 

The  intent  of  personality  as  expressed 
through  the  word  and  work  of  Jesus  is  not 
abstract  goodness,  but  the  realization  of  the 
normal  good;  not  the  formulation  of  theory, 
but  the  enrichment  of  all  life. 

The  Incarnation  is  the  graphic  portrayal 
of  the  mutual  inclusiveness  of  thought  and 
experience,  of  the  good  will  and  the  common 
weal.  In  this  complete  investment  of  life 
Jesus  inaugurated  a  unique  significance  to 
personality.    He   did  not   insulate   Himself 


30  Jesus:  The  World  Teacher. 

from  men.  Possessing  powers  of  mind  and 
heart  infinitely  beyond  all  other  men  of  His 
day,  He  saw  in  all  life  a  call  for  service.  He 
entered  sympathetically  into  the  life  of  Gali- 
lean fishermen,  of  rulers  of  synagogues,  of 
Eoman  centurions,  of  innocent  children,  of 
Pharisees,  publicans,  sinners,  and  every  other 
class  of  Jews  and  Gentiles.  He  embraced  the 
common.  He  explored  the  familiar.  In  the 
servile  extremities  of  individual  and  social 
life  He  was  conscious  of  the  presence  of  the 
highest  spiritual  cause.  In  His  Nazareth 
years  He  pursued  the  work  of  a  carpenter. 
He  made  Himself  at  one  with  the  obscure 
son  of  toil.  In  His  thought  He  took  cogni- 
zance of  the  lowly  shepherd,  of  the  unnoticed 
tiller  of  the  soil,  of  the  fisherman,  of  the  culi- 
nary work  of  the  housewife. 

At  the  supper  preceding  the  feast  of  the 
Passover  no  slave  was  at  hand  for  the  menial 
service  of  washing  the  feet  of  the  partici- 
pants. The  disciples,  as  free  men,  evidently 
declined  to  assume  this  degraded  office.  In 
the  midst  of  their  expressed  or  unexpressed 


Practical  Idealism.  31 

decimations,  Jesus  arose  from  supper,  laid 
aside  His  garments,  girded  Himself  with  a 
towel,  poured  water  into  a  basin,  and  began 
to  wash  the  disciples'  feet  and  wipe  them 
with  the  towel  wherewith  He  was  girded. 
This  supreme  act  of  condescension  by  God 
manifest  in  the  flesh,  forever  and  for  aye 
m.akes  radiant  the  most  abject  drudgery,  if 
performed  in  the  spirit  of  love.  Henceforth 
it  is  not  the  work,  but  the  spirit  which  under- 
lies and  pervades  it,  which  gives  it  abiding 
worth. 

VII. 

The  practical  idealism  of  Jesus  finds  itself 
vocalized  in  His  appreciation  of  man.  The 
pessimism  of  the  poet,  *^  There  's  no  trust,  no 
faith,  no  honesty  in  men;  all  perjured,  all 
forsworn,  all  naught,  all  dissemblers, ' '  has 
no  genetic  relatedness  to  the  spirit  of  the 
Son  of  God.  He  is  the  greatest  believer  in 
man  that  ever  trod  the  altitudes  and  depres- 
sions of  earth.  If  love,  truth,  and  righteous- 
ness do  not  eventually  make  themselves  uni- 


32  Jesus  :  The  ^A^ORLD  Teacher. 

versally  potent,  the  failure  will  be  in  astound- 
ing contrariety  to  the  confidence  of  Jesus  in 
the  human  race. 

The  title  which  He  appropriated  to  Him- 
self, Son  of  Man,  is  His  appreciation  of  the 
possibilities  of  the  finite  spirit.  Himself  as 
the  efflorescence  of  whatsoever  things  are 
true,  honest,  just,  pure,  lovely,  and  of  good 
report.  He  saw  potentially  in  the  voracious 
publican  who  marted  his  manhood  for  gold; 
in  the  Pharisee  who  made  of  sweet  religion  a 
rhapsody  of  words;  in  the  libertine  and 
harlot  who  blurred  the  grace  and  blush  of 
modesty,  called  virtue  hyiDocite,  plucked  the 
rose  from  the  fair  forehead  of  an  innocent 
love,  and  in  lieu  set  a  blister  there.  The  vices 
of  the  race  which  have  made  other  men 
thought-sick  seemed  to  inspire  in  Him  a  cre- 
dulity that  almost  approached  a  phantasm. 

In  the  possible  man  Jesus  had  an  infalli- 
ble trust,  despite  the  crassitudes  of  the  actual 
man.  The  ceaseless  enlargement,  the  infinite 
growth  of  our  moral  nature  He  never  failed 
to  aver.    He  was  a  believer  in  the  supremacy 


Practical  Idealism.  33 

of  the  best,  and  with  this  conviction  He  dis- 
missed all  particular  uncertainties  and  fears. 
To  the  sure  revelation  of  individual  and  ra- 
cial development  He  adjourned  the  solution 
of  present-day  riddles.  Men  of  lesser  faith 
have  suffered  themselves  to  be  baffled  by  the 
enigmas  of  the  actual.  The  paradox  of  latent 
belief  coexisting  with  patent  unbelief,  of 
latent  virtue  coexisting  with  patent  vice,  of 
possible  light  coexisting  with  actual  darkness, 
has  always  been  the  discomfiture  of  those 
who  see  in  man  a  fulfillment  rather  than  a 
prophecy. 

A  profound  and  pungent  philosophy  de- 
clares itself  in  the  estimate  which  Jesus  gives 
of  the  potential  man.  The  ethical  thought  of 
Plato  repeatedly  depreciates  the  latent 
capacity  of  Demos,  the  common  people.  The 
Greek  ethicist  only  saw  in  social  evolution 
the  efficiency  of  the  aristocracy.  In  his 
mind's  eye  the  subserviency  of  the  many  to 
the  few  was  the  only  social  possibility.  He 
was  painfully  conscious  of  fixtures  in  the 
moral  development  of  the  race. 

3 


34  Jesus:  The  World  Teacher. 

Epietetus  the  slave  becoming  an  ethical 
inspirer  of  humankind;  Peter  the  Galilean 
fisherman  becoming  the  inaugurator  in  word 
of  an  ethical  and  spiritual  dispensation  which 
is  mighty  through  God  to  the  pulling  down 
of  strongholds,  casting  down  imaginations 
and  every  high  thing  that  exalts  itself  against 
the  knowledge  of  the  good,  could  not  by  any 
logical  legerdemain  be  assigned  a  place  of 
power  in  Plato's  Eepublic.  To  Plato  and 
to  every  other  abstract  idealist  the  individual 
man  is  not  a  great  hope,  the  moral  universe 
in  miniature.  But  in  Jesus'  thought,  Jew 
and  Gentile,  bond  and  free,  were  the  kingdom 
of  love,  truth,  and  righteousness  in  embryo, 
and,  under  the  guidance  and  reinforcement 
of  the  ever-living,  ever-working  God,  the 
kingdom  in  embryo  would  inevitably  become 
love,  truth,  and  righteousness,  perfect  in  or- 
ganization and  powerful  in  execution. 

It  bodes  well  for  the  race  that  Jesus'  ap- 
praisement of  man  has  rooted  and  grounded 
itself  in  all  legitimate  thought  and  experi- 
ence.    The  thought  system  that  has  ethical 


Practical  Idealism.  35 

content,  and  the  practical  life  that  has  ethical 
form,  do  not  abstract  the  actual  man  from 
the  possible  man.  The  Borneo  head-hunter 
in  actuality  is  not  abstracted  by  legitimate 
thought  from  the  Borneo  Christian  gentle- 
man in  possibility.  The  lecherous  and 
thievish  habitue  of  a  New  York  Tenderloin 
saloon  in  reality  is  not  abstracted  by  legiti- 
mate thought  from  soul-winning  Jerry  Mc- 
Auley  in  possibility. 

The  social  commonwealth  finds  its  con- 
sistency is  quickened  in  conscience,  and  pur- 
sues the  path  of  progress  through  its  appre- 
ciation and  utilization  of  the  thought  and 
practice  of  Jesus. 


VIII. 

In  His  interpretation  of  God  and  His 
kingdom  Jesus  did  not  align  Himself  with 
Deistic  or  materialistic  votaries. 

Self-running  nature  is  an  idol,  as  Plato 
termed  it,  of  the  sense-den.  And  the  imper- 
sonal persistence  Force  of  Mr.  Herbert  Spen- 


36  Jesus  :  The  World  Teacher. 

cer  can  not  be  classified  otherwise  than 
among  philosophic  aberrations.  Such  pro- 
ducts of  unclear  thought  find  no  vantage 
ground  in  the  Incarnation.  The  absentee 
God  is  the  invention  of  incomplete  thought. 
The  cosmic  order  is  not  a  rival  of  the  ever- 
living,  ever-efficient  God.  It  is  the  form  in 
which  God  expresses  and  realizes  Himself. 
Jesus  recognized  the  world  as  God's  world, 
and  the  answer  to  any  and  all  queries  as 
to  why  anything  is,  or  changes,  or  comes  to 
pass,  must  be  sought.  He  affirmed,  in  essence, 
not  in  any  mechanical  necessity,  nor  in  any 
natural  antecedents,  nor  in  any  impersonal 
agency  of  any  kind,  but  in  the  will  and  pur- 
pose of  that  God  in  whom  all  things  live,  and 
move,  and  have  their  being. 

The  conflict  of  science  and  religion,  of 
which  the  latter  days  have  had  a  nauseating 
plethora,  is  an  illusion  of  sense-thinking. 
There  is  no  science  in  the  sense  of  ultimate 
reality  to  conflict  with  religion.  Nature  is 
not  a  self-sufficiency,  but  a  mere  tracing  of 
the  order  in  which  the  Divine  causality  pro- 


Practical  Idealism.  37 

ceeds.  It  is  no  approach  to  explanation,  but 
begins  and  ends  as  description. 

The  words  of  Jesus  descriptive  of  the  In- 
finite Presence  and  Power  embody  a  specula- 
tive and  practical  insight  which  is  basic  in 
all  incontrovertible  theories  of  being  and  ac- 
tivity :  ^  ^  God  is  a  Spirit ;  and  they  that  wor- 
ship Him  must  worship  Him  in  Spirit  and  in 
truth;"  ^'The  Father  hath  life  in  Himself;" 
''The  Father  that  dwelleth  in  Me,  He  doeth 
the  works ; "  ' '  Herein  is  My  Father  glorified, 
that  ye  bear  much  fruit;"  "My  Father 
worketh  hitherto,  and  I  work. ' ' 

The  materialistic  and  Deistic  banishment 
of  God  from  the  world  of  thoughthood  and 
thinghood  has  no  reputable  speculative  or 
practical  standing.  And  for  the  stigma  which 
attaches  itself  to  this  bald  naturalism  and 
false  supernaturalism,  the  word  and  work  of 
Jesus  are  in  a  peculiar  sense  directly  account- 
able. Jesus  did  not  root  the  kingdom  in  the 
''they  say"  of  any  man  or  body  of  men  as 
such.  He  respected  the  integration  of  God's 
spiritual  universe.  For  the  prophets,  priests, 


38  Jesus:  The  World  Teacher. 

and  believers  of  all  ages  who  spoke  the  words 
of  truth  and  soberness,  and  who  wrought 
righteousness  in  the  earth,  He  had  only 
words  of  commendation,  but  he  did  not  exhort 
any  man  to  absolve  or  to  project  himself  in 
the  name  of  any  other  soul  of  any  other  day. 
For  the  man  that  now  is,  Jesus  had  original 
regard.  This  regard  is  the  only  possible 
guaranty  of  the  perpetuation  of  the  kingdom 
upon  the  face  of  the  earth.  If  there  is  not 
an  inviolable  sacredness  in  every  man,  of 
every  clime,  of  every  age ;  if  every  man  is  not 
a  possible  champion  of  God's  thought  and 
purpose,  then  the  perpetuity  and  efficiency 
of  the  kingdom  is  an  impossible  consumma- 
tion. 

The  word  of  Moses  as  such,  of  Isaiah  as 
such,  of  Haggai  as  such,  is  devoid  of  spiritual 
effectiveness.  The  word  of  Moses,  of  Isaiah, 
of  Haggai,  as  the  word  of  the  omnipresent, 
ever- thoughtful,  ever-loving  God,  is  the  uni- 
versal word,  and  hence  is  iterated  and  re- 
iterated in  the  thought  and  service  of  devoted 
souls  in  all  periods  and  under  all  suns.    God 


Practical  Idealism.  39 

calls  upon  no  man  to  surrender  the  original 
endowment  of  his  being  in  favor  of  any  other 
man.  The  life  of  truth,  of  righteousness,  of 
love,  of  immediate  fellowship  and  coincidence 
with  God,  is  the  fundamental  and  essential 
privilege  of  every  individual  soul. 

Jesus  23ut  no  emphasis  on  ceremony,  the 
mechanism  of  the  kingdom.  He  did  not  dis- 
miss it.  He  made  it  incidental.  The  disciples 
found  themselves  effectually  rebuked  when 
they  contended  as  to  whom  of  their  number 
should  be  invested  with  the  supreme  digni- 
ties of  office.  Tlieir  spiritual  obtuseness  saw 
in  officialism  a  primacy.  Jesus  saw  primacy 
in  humility  of  spirit,  in  helpful  service,  in  the 
actualizing  of  our  spiritual  ideals.  Person- 
ality renewed  and  serviceable,  and  that  only, 
is  His  ideal.  The  supremacy  of  the  time- 
spirit  He  renounced.  With  Him  all  days  were 
sacred.  The  doing  of  our  Father's  will,  the 
finishing  of  His  work,  was  not  in  Jesus' 
thought  a  series  of  temporal  detachments, 
but  a  living  unity. 

To  the  kingdom  He  assigned  no  spatial 


40  Jesus  :  The  World  Teacher. 

limits.  He  saw  it  in  intent  and  extent  to  be 
at  one  with  the  thought  and  purpose  of  God 
and  with  the  consciousness  of  humankind. 

From  whatever  angle  we  consider  Jesus, 
His  practical  idealism  is  in  evidence.  He  was 
not  an  abstractionist  in  theory  nor  in  prac- 
tice. He  integrated  Himself  in  every  utter- 
ance and  in  every  circumstance.  Individual 
and  racial  life  find  their  wholeness  in  Him. 
The  Pauline  word,  '^Ye  are  complete  in 
Him, ' '  is  one  of  certitude. 


Chapter  II. 
PROGRESSIVENESS, 


About  the  life  and  sayings  of  Jesus  there  is  a  stamp  of 
personal  originality,  combined  with  profundity  of  insight, 
which  must  place  the  Prophet  of  Nazareth,  even  in  the  esti- 
mation of  those  who  have  no  belief  in  His  inspiration,  in  the 
very  first  rank  of  the  men  of  sublime  genius  of  whom  our 
species  can  boast.  _^^^^  STUART  MILL. 


In  order  to  render  communion  with  Him  possible,  the 
Deity  has  stooped  from  His  throne,  and  has  not  only,  in  the 
person  of  the  Son,  taken  upon  Him  the  veil  of  our  human 
flesh,  but,  in  the  person  of  the  Father,  taken  upon  Him  the 
veil  of  our  human  thoughts,  and  permitted  us,  by  His  own 
spoken  authority,  to  conceive  Him  simply  and  clearly  as  a 
loving  Father  and  Friend.  _^^^^  ^^^^^^^ 


Thou  seemest  human  and  divine, 

The  highest,  holiest  manhood,  Thou; 
Our  wills  are  ours,  we  know  not  how; 

Our  wills  are  ours,  to  make  them  Thine. 

—TENNYSON. 
42 


PROGEESSIVENESS. 

The  most  casual  study  of  the  life  of 
Jesus  reveals  the  fact  that  His  nature  was 
pre-eminently  progressive.  In  no  sense  was 
He  an  obstructionist.  In  His  soul  there  were 
no  fixed  bounds.  There  was  no  attempt  to 
arrest  the  flow  of  nature.  He  was  the  em- 
bodiment of  perfect  sanity.  The  shadow 
upon  the  dial-plate  of  the  days  was  not  ob- 
scured by  His  interposition,  nor  did  His 
sanely  conservative  hand  seek  to  turn  it  back. 

For  prophet  and  priest  Jesus  had  the 
utmost  regard,  but  He  did  not  suffer  them  to 
be  His  mouthpiece.  Moses,  Isaiah,  Ezekiel, 
David,  and  other  worthies  of  Israel's  pristine 
period.  He  did  not  accept  as  His  final  dicta- 
tors in  the  realm  of  thought  or  service.  For 
the  past  He  had  the  utmost  respect,  but  He 
saw  the  past  as  He  saw  the  present,  merely 
initial,  and  nothing  more. 

43 


44  Jesus  :  The  World  Teacher. 

Above  all  of  His  contemporaries  and  pre- 
decessors Jesus  was  a  diviner  of  tendencies. 
In  the  midst  of  the  most  degraded  condition 
of  thought  and  action  He  saw  a  possible  up- 
wardness.  The  capacity  of  all  men  to  love 
and  aspire  was  graphic  to  His  mind's  eye. 

It  is  an  evidence  of  wisdom  when  men  can 
discern,  through  the  chaos  and  confusion  of 
an  hour,  an  orderly  tendency  that  is  undevi- 
ating.  It  is  an  evidence  of  excessive  micro- 
scopy when  our  conclusions  are  founded  upon 
the  happenings  of  the  moment. 

The  vessel  of  stanchest  beam  that  sails 
the  sea  describes  a  zigzag  course  between 
ports  when  the  view-point  is  circumscribed 
by  the  immediate  present.  But  with  the  eye 
fixed  upon  the  mile  traversed  it  is  easy  to  see 
that  the  ship  holds  her  true  course,  and  in 
the  appointed  time  will  reach  her  destined 
harbor.  All  criticism  of  moral  development 
that  is  marked  by  a  visible  boundary-line  is 
of  necessity  pessimistic  and  plaintive.  But 
when  the  centuries  and  the  millenniums  com- 
prise the  perspective,  our  conclusions  are  full 


Progressiveness.  45 

of  good  cheer  for  the  present  and  abounding 
hopefulness  for  the  future. 

Jesus  lived  at  a  period  of  the  world's  his- 
tory when  the  blackness  of  a  Cimmerian 
night  engrossed  the  thoughts  of  men.  The 
people  of  His  own  blood  were  in  bondage  to 
the  Gentile  world.  The  heel  of  the  oppressor 
bore  heavily  on  their  necks.  They  felt  the 
weight  of  the  rod  of  iron.  The  Jerusalem  of 
their  fathers  was  divested  of  its  greatness. 
A  pathos  surcharged  the  hearts  of  Abra- 
ham's seed.  Had  an  ultra-conservatism  dom- 
inated the  thought  of  Jesus,  He  would  have 
filled  the  ears  of  men  with  jeremiads  and 
rank  iconoclasms.  Infinitely  blest,  indeed,  is 
humankind  that  out  of  the  darkness  of  such 
a  night  a  day-star  sprung;  that  out  of  the 
degraded  loins  of  a  fallen  people  was  possi- 
ble the  efflorescence  of  humankind. 

I. 

The  generation  that  was  made  notable 
by  the  Incarnation  of  the  Son  of  God  was 
transcendently  centripetal  in  its   tendency. 


46  Jesus:  The  World  Teacher. 

Men  thought  of  themselves  first  and  last. 
The  age  was  one  of  extreme  individualism. 
The  conception  of  greatness  was  to  be  min- 
istered unto.  The  realities  of  life  were  the 
things  of  sense.  To  have  barns  filled  with 
plenty,  to  be  clothed  in  purple  and  fine  linen, 
to  fare  sumptuously  every  day,  was  to  be 
rich.  To  exercise  authority  over  inferior 
peoples,  to  wield  the  scepter  of  political  po- 
tency, to  have  the  chief  place  in  the  syna- 
gogue, to  be  feted  and  flattered  by  fawning 
sycophants,  was  the  ideal  of  power.  Jesus  op- 
posed this  regnant  trend  of  thought  and  ac- 
tion. He  saw  finis  written  in  letters  of  livid 
hue  npon  the  things  of  time  and  sense.  He 
knew  that  carnal-mindedness  was  death ;  that 
the  letter  killeth;  that  the  flesh  profiteth 
nothing.  All  that  men  of  low  ideals  called 
ends  He  called  means.  What  stirred  the  en- 
thusiasm of  the  mercenary  Jew,  Greek,  or 
Eoman,  provoked  His  disdain. 

The  rich  fool  was  termed  by  the  age  in 
which  Jesus  lived  the  man  of  wisdom.  Accord- 
ing to  the  notions  of  the  first  Christian  cen- 


Progressiveness.  47 

tnry,  the  tetrarch,  the  procurator,  the  centu- 
rion, the  emperor,  were  the  acme  of  individ- 
ual sovereignty.  This  outlook  upon  life,  from 
the  view-point  of  Jesus,  was  an  ultra-conserv- 
atism, whose  end  could  not  be  other  than  the 
reign  of  Chaos  and  Old  Night.  In  His  pro- 
gressive conception  of  life  Jesus  utilized  the 
past.  But  He  did  not  suffer  it  for  the  briefest 
period  to  assert  a  mastery  over  the  present. 
He  stood  for  the  highest  initiation  of  the  in- 
dividual life;  the  initiative  of  the  abiding, 
unitary,  efficient,  and  synthetic  self.  In  other 
speech.  He  stood  for  the  life  of  the  spirit. 
And  the  spirit  refuses  to  be  cabined,  cribbed, 
confined,  bound  in  by  saucy  doubts  and  fears. 
Its  watchword  is  ^ '  Onward !  ^ ' 

The  Incarnation  would  have  had  no  per- 
manent significance  for  the  world  if  it  had 
been  marked  in  slightest  measure  by  a  per- 
ennial apotheosis  of  the  past.  It  would  have 
been  the  paralysis  of  the  mental  and  moral 
activities  of  the  race.  It  would  have  been  the 
Ultima  Thule  of  all  progress.     The  wheels 


48  Jesus:  The  World  Teacher. 

of  civilized  life  would  have  been  blocked  for 
all  time  to  come. 

Devout  should  be  our  thanksgiving  that 
Jesus  did  not  participate  in  any  measure  in 
the  stagnant  thought  of  His  day.  The  sec- 
taries of  His  day— the  scribes,  the  elders,  the 
Pharisees,  the  Sadducees— gave  continual 
emphasis  to  the  past,  but  depreciated  the 
present  with  its  manifold  duties  and  oppor- 
tunities. For  them  the  sun  was  standing  still 
in  the  heavens.  ^'Our  father  Abraham"  was 
a  frequent  phrase  upon  their  lips,  but  his 
spirit  they  had  lost.  They  builded  the  tombs 
of  the  prophets,  and  garnished  the  sepulchers 
of  the  righteous,  but  they  hesitated  not  to  fill 
up  the  sanguinary  measure  of  their  fathers 
who  killed  the  prophets. 

They  sat  in  Moses'  seat,  and  expounded 
his  word,  but  they  failed  to  incarnate  the 
teaching  of  the  great  lawgiver.  They  were 
outside  men.  They  were  studious  in  making 
clear  the  exterior  of  the  cup  and  platter,  but 
oblivious  of  the  gross  crimes  of  extortion  and 
excess.     And  the  scribes,  elders,  Pharisees, 


Progressiveness.  49 

Sadducees,  were  the  ecclesiastical  representa- 
tives of  Israel.  Priest  and  people  were  bound 
together,  not  only  by  consanguinity,  but  by 
a  moral  affinity.  But  not  in  slightest  degree 
did  Jesus  participate  in  the  sensuous  concep- 
tions of  His  own  people.  They  were  of  the 
earth  and  spoke  of  the  earth.  He  was  from 
heaven  and  above  all  men. 

Every  contemplation  of  the  character  of 
Jesus  increases  our  appreciation  of  Him  as 
the  world's  moral  phenomenon.  Absolutely 
unaccounted  for  He  is  in  ancestry  and  in 
environment.  He  is  the  world's  miracle.  In 
the  light  of  the  Incarnation,  all  miracles— the 
parting  of  the  Ked  Sea,  the  falling  of  the 
manna,  the  swimming  of  the  ax-head,  the 
translation  of  Elijah,  the  Hebrew  children  in 
the  fiery  furnace,  the  multiplication  of  the 
loaves  and  fishes,  the  opening  of  the  blind 
eyes,  the  raising  of  the  dead— are  utterly 
subordinate. 

We  are  like  unto  incredulous  children 
when  we  stand  aghast  at  any  extraordinary 
event  in  the  light  of  Jesus,  the  Divine  Reason 
4 


50  Jesus  :  The  World  Teacher. 

made  flesh.  He  explains  all  apparent  leaps 
in  nature.  He  is  the  mental  and  moral  salta- 
tion of  Deific  imfolding.  To  the  conservative 
word  which  said,  ^^AU  that  is  was  made  by 
God,'*  Jesus  added,  God  is  leaving  that,  and 
entering  this  other.  Moses  did  not  say  the 
final  word  for  Israel's  weal,  neither  did  Joel, 
Ezekiel,  or  Isaiah.  The  Infinite  Mind,  says 
Jesus,  is  ever  declaring  itself.  The  Father 
heart  is  ever  throbbing  for  the  well-being  and 
felicity  of  its  children.  Whatever  took  form 
in  the  past  that  did  not  increase  the  sum  of 
human  happiness  in  the  present  Jesus  repu- 
diated. He  was  the  champion  of  progress, 
both  in  thought  and  action. 

II. 

What  the  philosophies  of  the  pre-Chris- 
tian periods  failed  to  bring  forth  to  the  birth, 
Jesus  brought  forth.  The  search  for  the 
primal  fact  of  life  was  not  successfully 
prosecuted  by  Thales,  Heraclitus,  iVnax- 
imenes,  Democritus,  Plato,  Aristotle,  or  any 
of  the  speculative  Greeks.    A  radical  defect 


Progressiveness.  51 

is  characteristic  of  all  purely  human  essays 
to  find  out  God.  The  affirmations  that  water, 
or  fire,  or  earth,  or  atoms,  or  ideas,  or  con- 
templation is  the  primal  element  of  all  life, 
are  negational  and  void  of  content.  No  sane 
thinker  to-day  is  willing  to  cease  his  inquiries 
with  the  postulates  of  the  greatest  of  heathen 
philosophers. 

Thought  is  lost  in  an  infinite  regress  when 
we  attach  ourselves  to  any  material  fact  or 
to  any  purely  mental  fact.  Democritus,  with 
his  gross  atoms  creating  stone  walls,  and  then 
by  a  process  of  refinement  giving  to  the 
world  Homer's  Iliad,  did  not  satisfy  the  in- 
quisitive minds  of  his  fellow-men.  Neither 
was  this  work  accomplished  by  Plato  in  his 
refined  idealism.  This  great  Greek  deified 
reason.  He  degraded  will  and  emotion.  He 
made  of  God  a  pure  abstraction,  utterly  re- 
moved from  the  world  which  He  had  made, 
and  from  the  suffering  and  aspiring  children 
who  are  the  offspring  of  His  mind  and  heart. 

The  inability  of  the  pre-Christian  Greeks 
to    interpret    the    Divine    nature    was    not 


52  Jesus:  The  world  Teacher. 

isolated.  The  Hebrew  in  some  measure 
shared  the  GreeJ^  point  of  view.  David  in 
the  imprecatory  Psalms  did  not  correctly 
express  the  Infinite  heart.  God  could  not 
possibly  be  happy  when  the  children  of  idola- 
trous Babylon  were  dashed  against  stones; 
neither  could  He  hate  any  man  with  a  perfect 
hatred.  And  the  spirit  of  David  was  partici- 
pated in  by  the  greatest  of  the  prophets. 
These  men  spoke  out  of  the  limitations  of 
their  own  hearts  when  they  thus  spoke.  God 
is  not  immoral.  But  many  of  the  utterances 
of  the  prophets  would  make  Him  so.  How 
transcendent  is  the  utterance  of  Jesus  rela- 
tive to  the  primal  fact  of  all  life!  He  did 
not  for  a  moment  give  primacy  to  water,  or 
earth,  or  fire,  or  atoms,  or  reason,  or  con- 
templation as  the  soul  of  the  universe.  All 
nature,  with  its  ramification.  He  saw  as  the 
method  by  which  the  Infinite  mind,  will,  and 
heart  are  made  visible,  tangible,  audible  to 
the  finite  mind,  will,  and  heart. 

What    we    are   pleased,    in    our    limited 
speech,  to  call  the  uniformity  of  nature,  is 


Progressiveness.  53 

but  tlie  ordinary  channel  for  the  forthputting 
of  God's  will.  It  is  an  order  of  procedure, 
nothing  more.  It  may  be  suspended  at  any 
moment.  As  opposed  to  ethical  and  spiritual 
completeness  it  is  nil.  As  Professor  Bowne, 
in  his  ^^ Immanence  of  God,'*  expresses  it, 
*'God,  as  the  absolute  source  of  all  finite  ex- 
istence, is  bound  by  nothing  but  His  own  wis- 
dom and  goodness.  What  they  dictate,  that 
He  does.  If  they  call  for  uniformity,  there 
is  uniformity.  If  they  call  for  change,  there 
is  change.  God  never  acts  against  nature, 
because  for  Him  there  is  no  nature  to  act 
against.  Nature  conceived  as  a  barrier  to 
God,  or  as  something  with  which  God  must 
reckon,  is  a  pure  fiction,  a  product  of  unclear 
thought  which  has  lost  itself  in  abstractions. 
If  for  us  God  is  a  personal  and  moral  being, 
and  if  His  supreme  aim  in  human  creation  is 
a  moral  one,  we  shall  have  no  a  priori  hos- 
tility to  miracles.  If  we  believe  in  a  God  in 
whom  we  live  and  move  and  have  our  being, 
and  if  we  believe  that  we  may  and  do  enter 
into  fellowship  and  communion  with  Him  in 


54  Jesus  :  The  World  Teacher. 

prayer  and  lioly  livin*?,  it  will  seem  to  us 
the  most  natural  thing  in  the  world  that  there 
should  be  tokens  of  His  presence. ''  **What 
in  our  limitation  of  speech  we  call  miracu- 
lous is  nothing  more,'*  says  Dr.  Lyman  Ab- 
bott, *^tlian  the  Infinite  Presence  and  Power 
in  unexpected  actions  demonstrating  the  ex- 
istence of  an  intelligent  Will  and  Power  su- 
perior to  that  of  man. ' ' 

And  not  only  did  Jesus  teach  and  embody 
the  priority  of  Infinite  Mind  and  Will,  but  He 
also  taught  and  exemplified  the  priority  of 
Infinite  Love.  God  is  present  always  in 
causal  efficiency  in  every  experience  of  life. 
While  He  makes  the  outgoings  of  the  morn- 
ing and  the  evening  to  rejoice,  brings  the 
wind  out  of  His  treasuries,  and  girds  the 
mountains  with  power.  He  also  inclines  His 
ear  to  the  voice  of  His  children,  seeks  them  in 
the  midst  of  their  wanderings,  loves  them 
with  an  everlasting  love,  gives  unto  them  His 
j)eace  and  joy,  and  preserves  them  unto  life 
everlasting.  He  is  not  only  the  Infinite  Mind 
and  Will,  He    is    also    the  Infinite  Heart. 


Progressiveness.  55 

Aristotle  declared  that  the  final  word  of 
Ethics  was  that  the  world  loves  and  longs  for 
God,  but  God,  as  a  being  of  pure  contempla- 
tion, did  not  love  the  world. 

Of  far  remove  from  the  postulate  of  per- 
haps the  greatest  Greek  thinker  is  the  postu- 
late of  Jesus.  It  was  the  Son  of  God  who 
taught  men  to  say,  Our  Father,  my  God  and 
your  God.  God,  declared  Jesus,  is  ever  pres- 
ent working  with  men,  making  of  Himself 
the  prime  factor  in  their  abiding  attainments, 
and  their  helpful  Friend,  Brother,  and 
Father  in  their  hours  of  direst  need.  Jesus' 
unfolding  of  the  Divine  nature  has  found  ac- 
ceptance with  every  system  of  thought  that 
has  sought  for  completeness,  every  system 
that  makes  of  man  something  more  than  the 
evolution  of  a  cloud-bank  or  the  mere  puppet 
of  blind  chance. 

If  a  man  is  greater  than  the  locomotive 
which  is  fashioned  by  his  hand,  and  if  any 
moral  quality  whatsoever  inheres  in  the 
deeds  of  the  human  family,  then  we  are  able 
to  say,  with  no  fear  of  contradiction,  that 


56  Jesus  :  The  Wopld  Teacher. 

Jesus  has  given  to  the  world  a  complete  body 
of  thought,  both  as  regards  God  and  man, 
that  is  unapproachable  in  its  fonn  and  con- 
tent. 

Plato,  Aristotle,  David,  Moses,  in  the  light 
of  the  Incarnation,  appear  notably  defective 
in  their  interpretation  of  the  ethical  nature 
of  God.  They  made  Him  a  stranger  to  the 
deeps  of  the  human  heart.  From  their  angle 
of  vision  God  was  mindful  of  the  philosopher, 
the  poet,  the  aristocrat,  the  prophet,  the 
priest,  the  king,  the  sons  and  daughters  of 
Israel;  but  He  gave  no  thought  to  the  war- 
rior, the  tradesman,  the  hoi  polloi,  the  sons 
and  daughters  of  the  heathen.  But  Jesus  pro- 
tested, God  so  loved  the  world  that  He  gave 
Himself  in  the  person  of  His  Son  for  its  re- 
demption. 

The  graphic  delineation  of  that  love  is 
seen  in  the  return  of  the  prodigal  son.  Ee- 
gardless,  says  Jesus,  of  the  obloquy  brought 
upon  the  paternal  name  by  the  riotous  son, 
he  is  received  with  open  arms  and  lavish 
kisses  upon  his  return  to  the  family  roof-tree. 


Progressiveness.  57 

From  the  view-point  of  Jesus,  God^s  nature 
is  not  primarily  judicial  in  its  attitude  to- 
ward men,  but  fatherly.  Our  theology  has 
been  prone  to  put  the  emphasis  on  the  meta- 
physical rather  than  the  ethical  nature  of 
God.  In  so  doing  we  have  alienated  ourselves 
from  the  mind  that  was  in  Christ  Jesus.  The 
Pauline  word  is  worthy  of  all  acceptation: 
love  is  greater  than  knowledge,  mystery, 
tongues  of  angels,  gifts  of  prophecy,  govern- 
ments, working  of  miracles. 

Not  only  has  Jesus '  interpretation  of  God 
provoked  agreement  in  the  speculative 
sphere,  but  it  has  rooted  and  grounded  itself 
in  the  popular  mind.  Our  entire  educational 
system  is  a  tribute  to  the  progressive 
thought  of  the  Son  of  God.  The  philosophies 
of  the  pre-Christian  ages  are  not  the  founda- 
tion-stones of  modern  ethical  thought.  But 
Jesus'  thought,  personalized  in  Himself,  is 
the  elect,  tried,  and  precious  corner-stone 
upon  which  the  superstructure  of  civilized  life 
is  builded.    The  great  European  and  Ameri- 


58  Jesus:  The  World  Teacher. 

can  educational  institutions  are  founded  on 
what  Jesus  thought  and  did. 

When  we  say  Christian  Education  we  af- 
firm the  acme  of  mental  development.  Be- 
yond that,  human  thought  does  not  reach. 
It  is  our  mental  zenith.  All  present-day  civil- 
ization in  its  best  estate  is  merely  an  approxi- 
mation to  the  verbal  and  incarnate  wisdom 
of  Jesus. 

And  the  civilization  that  shall  issue  from 
the  matrix  of  the  future  shall  be  an  approxi- 
mation to  His  exceeding  wisdom,  but  nothing 
more.  For  amid  the  endless  identities  which 
Jesus  as  the  Son  of  Man  sustains  with  the 
sons  of  men,  exist  the  endless  differences  be- 
tween Himself  as  the  Eternal  Word  and  hu- 
mankind. He  is  bone  of  our  bone,  flesh  of 
our  flesh,  and  is  touched  with  a  feeling  of  our 
infirmities;  but  in  the  myster}^  of  His  God- 
head He  is  inapproachable  now  and  forever. 

III. 

Jesus  was  progressive  in  His  interpreta- 
tion of  man.    He  declined  to  look  upon  man 


PROGRESSIVENESS.  59 

as  a  fraction,  but  insisted  upon  Ms  integra- 
tion. Man  must  make  himself  whole,  else  run 
counter  to  the  will  of  God.  The  sinner  is  he 
who  determines  to  metamorphose  himself  into 
a  thing;  to  take  himself  out  of  the  category 
of  sentient,  conceiving,  acting,  divinely  cre- 
ated, eternally  destined  creatures,  and  make 
of  himself  a  mere  machine,  a  flesh-and-blood 
automaton.  Jesus  protested  against  such  a 
degradation  of  the  man.  The  certain  man 
whose  finality  of  life  was  comprehended  in 
well-filled  barns  and  bodily  indulgence  may 
have  had  high  registration  in  the  esteem  of 
his  worldly-minded  neighbors,  but  in  Jesus' 
thought  he  was  a  fool. 

The  political  potentate  who  wielded  his 
scepter  of  power  as  did  Herod,  the  Jewish 
governor,  may  have  won  the  encomiums  of 
his  henchmen,  but  in  Jesus'  thought  Herod 
was  a  fox.  The  image  of  manhood  he  had 
forfeited  and  sunken  to  the  level  of  a  shrewd, 
keen-eyed,  treacherous  beast.  The  Prophet 
of  Nazareth  stood  for  completeness  of  life. 
He  did  not  inveigh  against  the  most  exten- 


60  Jesus  :  The  World  Teacher. 

sive  differentiation  in  the  individual  or  com- 
munity life.  Indeed,  lie  Himself  gives  genesis 
to  the  world's  highest  differentiation  men- 
tally and  morally;  but  in  the  midst  of  this 
endless  permutation  and  combination  of  hu- 
man activity,  Jesus  insisted  upon  a  whole- 
ness of  life. 

No  man  ever  gave  such  a  varied  exhi- 
bition of  thought,  will,  and  emotion  as  the 
Son  of  God,  and  yet  He  said  of  Himself  rela- 
tive to  God,  ''I  and  My  Father  are  one.'' 
How  it  is  possible  for  a  man  with  his  ills, 
his  needs,  his  weaknesses,  his  limited  activ- 
ities, to  be  one  with  God  is  answered  by  the 
philosophical  dictum  that  the  highest  organ- 
ization is  based  upon  an  impregnable  unity; 
that  differentiation  in  its  complete  sense  is 
only  possible  through  an  unqualified  integra- 
tion. 

Jesus  in  His  appreciation  of  man  was  un- 
willing for  man  to  develop  abnormally.  He 
esteemed  sjnumetry  in  every  form.  If  a  man 
would  make  of  himself  a  farmer,  Jesus  said. 
Be  a  man  while  sowing  the  seed,  tilling  the 


Progressiveness.  61 

soil,  reaping  the  harvest.  Do  not  let  the  soil 
or  the  seed  or  the  harvest  gain  the  ascend- 
ency over  the  man.  The  mere  farmer  is  a 
fool,  not  a  man.  If  a  man  would  be  a  me- 
chanic or  merchant,  Jesus  says,  Be  a  man 
before  all  things  else.  Handle  your  tools; 
do  not  let  your  tools  handle  you.  Sell  your 
goods ;  do  not  let  your  goods  sell  you. 

Be  a  man.  As  Hegel  the  philosopher 
would  put  it,  Be  a  person ;  that  is,  a  person- 
ality with  aspirations  of  nature  that  can  not 
be  satisfied  with  houses,  lands,  machines, 
money.  This  evidently  was  one  of  the  mean- 
ings of  Jesus  when  He  termed  Himself  the 
Son  of  Man.  He  was  man  in  His  complete- 
ness. He  was  a  man  of  thought,  and  there- 
fore in  sympathy  with  every  thinker.  He  was 
a  man  of  manual  work,  and  therefore  in  sym- 
pathy with  every  callous-handed  son  of  toil. 
He  was  a  man  of  poverty;  He  was  subjected 
to  indignity,  to  treachery,  to  desertion,  to 
false  accusation,  to  an  ignominious  death; 
but  in  every  phase  of  experience  He  main- 
tained the  integrity  of  manhood.      Diverse 


62  Jesus:  The  World  Teacher. 

was  His  activity,  and  diverse  was  His  experi- 
ence, but  at  no  time  did  He  fractionalize 
Himself.  He  made  full  proof  of  His  man- 
hood everywhere  and  at  all  times.  Above  all 
other  men.  He  is  the  world's  ethical  and  spir- 
itual integer. 

In  the  light  of  the  integrated  manhood  of 
Jesus  Christ  we  are  justified  in  saying  that 
the  sin  of  the  race  consists,  in  large  measure, 
in  a  distribution  of  moral  functions.  Too 
often  is  it  true  that  a  man  is  spiritually- 
minded  on  the  Sabbath-day,  but  carnally- 
minded  in  the  mid-week. 

All  of  us  loiow  men  who,  while  leaders  in 
Church  movements,  do  not,  as  lawyers,  doc- 
tors, farmers,  artisans,  merchants,  morally 
functionalize  themselves  at  every  opportu- 
nity in  the  business  and  political  worlds. 
They  make  of  themselves,  not  whole  men,  but 
fractional  men.  And  the  same  stricture  may 
be  made  practically  of  every  man  despite  his 
identification  with  the  Church  of  Jesus 
Christ.  The  Gospel  instance  of  the  rich 
young  man  coming  to  Jesus  with  the  inquiry 


PROGRESSIVENESS.  63 

as  to  how  to  have  eternal  life,  strikingly  illus- 
trates the  distribution  of  moral  functions. 
This  young  man  had  not  plucked  the  rose 
from  the  fair  forehead  of  an  innocent  love; 
he  had  not  incarnadined  his  hand  in  the  ruddy 
life  currents  of  his  fellow-man;  he  had  not 
sold  and  marketed  his  manhood  for  gold ;  he 
had  not  dallied  with  the  good  name  of  his 
friend  or  neighbor;  he  had  not  sullied  the 
escutcheon  of  his  parentage;  but  when 
brought  to  the  crux  of  his  desire  for  eternal 
life,  ^'Sell  what  thou  hast  and  give  to  the 
poor,  and  come  follow  Me,"  he  declined  to 
thus  functionalize  himself,  and  in  that  decli- 
nation the  fractional  rather  than  the  integral 
man  was  in  the  ascendant. 

Jesus  makes  no  demand  upon  any  man 
that  is  not  in  perfect  consonance  with  the  in- 
dividual's highest  realization.  The  rich 
young  man  saw  the  forfeiture  of  his  material 
wealth  as  an  irreparable  loss.  He  was  indif- 
ferent to  the  ethical  and  spiritual  wealth  that 
becomes  the  property  of  every  man  whose  di- 
versity of  thought  and  service  has  its  genesis 


64  Jesus:  The  World  Teacher. 

through  a  mental  and  moral  oneness  with 
Jesus  Christ.  The  fraction  of  life,  his  money, 
the  young  man  saw  and  insisted  upon  retain- 
ing. The  wholeness  of  life  that  lay  in  a  dis- 
cipleship  of  Jesus  he  refused  to  see.  He 
made  himself  subject  to  shekels.  Jesus  de- 
manded, Make  the  shekels  subject  to  your 
manhood.  The  craftsman  must  not  be  ridden 
by  the  routine  of  his  craft.  The  attorney 
must  be  greater  than  the  statute-book;  tEe 
preacher  must  transcend  the  forms  of  wor- 
ship. In  other  words,  the  man  must  be  in 
the  ascendant. 

The  Sybarite  in  the  indulgence  of  his  ap- 
petites was  a  good  stomach,  but  not  a  man. 
Caligula,  Nero,  Napoleon,  were  powerful 
hands,  but  they  were  not  men.  Achilles  and 
Ajax  were  strong  arms  and  muscular  legs, 
but  they  were  not  men.  In  His  entire  min- 
istry Jesus  inveighed  against  monstrosities. 
Eeflect  the  Divine  nature;  walk  and  work  as 
sons  and  daughters  of  God;  reproduce  the 
thoughts  of  God  by  converting  nature  into 
art;  be  master  of  the  world  in  which  your 


PROGRESSIVENESS.  65 

Father  has  been  pleased  to  place  yon;  make 
of  yonr  life  an  integrated  righteousness,  in- 
dividually and  collectively,— are  the  words  of 
exhortation  perennially  sounded  by  Jesus, 
the  Incarnate  Son  of  the  Ever-blessed  God. 
Does  it  inhere  in  us  to  put  any  other  con- 
struction on  life? 

IV. 

As  a  progressive,  Jesus  did  not  rest  in 
particulars,  either  as  regards  men  or  things. 
The  fish  in  the  net,  the  treasure  hid  in  a 
field,  the  sower  of  seed,  the  leaven  in  the 
measures  of  meal,  the  pearl  of  great  price, 
did  not  engross  His  thought  as  such.  He 
saw  them  as  symbols  of  the  worth  and  devel- 
opment of  the  kingdom  of  God.  The  spar- 
rows that  sowed  not  nor  reaped  nor  gathered 
into  barns,  the  lilies  that  toiled  not  nor  spun, 
He  did  not  appreciate  primarily  as  such,  but 
as  symbols  of  God's  care  and  solicitude  for 
every  son  and  daughter  of  man.  The  world, 
to  His  mind,  was  a  house  of  glass,  perfectly 
transparent,  through  which  He  discerned 
5 


66  Jesus  :  The  World  Teacher. 

God's  will,  and  saw  the  throbbings  of  the  In- 
finite Heart  in  behalf  of  every  child  of  the 
race.  The  publican  proscribed  by  his  brother 
Jew,  and  the  harlot  anathematized  by  all 
men,  are  not  alien,  said  Jesus,  to  God's  love 
and  thought.  The  parables  of  Jesus  are  the 
discovery  of  moral  proportions  between  the 
human  and  the  Divine ;  between  man  the  sin- 
ner and  God  the  Savior. 

Socrates,  Plato,  Aristotle,  the  most  re- 
nowned and  progressive  of  the  Greeks,  did 
not  find  any  moral  proportion  between  God 
and  man.  They  did  not  affirm  any  identity 
between  a  suffering  and  sinful  world  and  the 
Deific  power  that  spoke  that  world  into  being. 
In  the  true  sense  of  science,  which  is  the  dis- 
covery of  analogy,  of  identity  in  the  most  re- 
mote elements,  these  great  Greeks  were  not 
scientific.  They  were  mere  children  crying 
for  a  light,  and  with  no  language  but  a  cry. 

But  Jesus  as  a  thinker  was  eminently  sci- 
entific. He  discovered  analogy  between  so  re- 
mote a  thing  as  a  mustard-seed  and  the  king- 
dom of  heaven.     He  discovered  an  identity 


Progressiveness.  67 

between  Zaccheus,  the  chief  of  public  plun- 
derers, and  God,  who  is  of  purer  eyes  than 
to  behold  evil,  and  can  not  look  upon  iniquity. 
Before  the  refractory  facts  of  human  experi- 
ence Jesus  was  not  confounded.  He  had  the 
scientific  mind.  The  rigid  constitution  of  the 
provincial  Jew,  the  expanding  powers  of  the 
thoughtful  and  artistic  Greek,  the  tremen- 
dous energy  and  stubborn  nature  of  the  im- 
perial Roman,  He  was  able  to  bring  under 
the  law  of  the  kingdom  of  God,  and  thus  re- 
duce to  a  unity  what  was  apparently  a  hope- 
less antagonism.  What  men  termed  classes 
Jesus  did  not  admit.  He  did  not  give  a  pre- 
eminence to  Jew  or  Samaritan,  to  Greek  aris- 
tocrat or  democrat,  to  Roman  patrician  or 
plebeian.  For  the  Pharisee  He  did  not  have 
a  standard  of  moral  judgment  separate  and 
distinct  from  that  which  acquitted  or  con- 
demned the  publican.  He  saw  men  as  men, 
and  He  dealt  with  them  accordingly.  And 
thus  interpreting  their  nature  and  condition 
He  was  able  to  effect  a  unity  where  other 
thinkers  and  doers  had  failed.    His  point  of 


68  Jesus:  The  World  Teacher. 

view  was  the  scientific  point  of  view.  His 
was  the  angle  of  vision,  the  way  of  approach 
which  animates  the  last  fiber  of  all  organized 
life,  trees,  flowers,  birds,  fishes,  no  less  than 
men,  women,  and  children.  He  saw  the  world 
issuing  from  a  moral  center,  and  with  this 
vision  He  was  able  to  give  the  proper  value 
to  every  radius  of  human  thought  and  action. 
He  was  not  misled  by  the  pretentious  piety 
of  the  Pharisee,  nor  was  He  inveigled  by  the 
partisan  zeal  of  the  Herodians.  The  baseless 
rationalism  of  the  Sadducees  was  understood 
in  its  every  detail  by  His  discriminating 
mind.  As  the  evangelist  John  puts  it.  He 
needed  not  that  any  man  should  testify  of 
man,  for  He  knew  what  was  in  man.  This 
central  point  of  view  enabled  Jesus  to  inter- 
pret all  life  in  universal  terms.  The  Jew  as 
a  Jew,  the  Greek  as  a  Greek,  He  did  not  con- 
sider. He  waved  aside  every  physical  limi- 
tation, and  saw  men  in  their  identity  of  in- 
terest, aspiration,  volition.  He  was  the 
world's  first  democrat,  says  James  Eussell 
Lowell.    He  welded  together  the  most  diverse 


Progressiveness.  69 

peoples,  and  made  of  His  kingdom  infinitely 
more  than  the  kingdom  of  Israel.  The  indi- 
vidual man  separate  from  his  fellows  is  re- 
pulsive and  insignificant,  like  the  individual 
pigment  separate  from  the  picture;  but  at- 
tached to  all  men  He  takes  on  beauty  and  sig- 
nificance, like  the  pigment  in  the  finished 
work  of  the  artist. 

V. 

The  progressiveness  of  Jesus  is  nowhere 
more  patent  than  in  His  interpretation  of 
man's  relationship  to  God.  He  did  not  in 
His  teachings  give  any  aid  or  comfort  to  the 
doctrine  which  we  term  total  depravity.  He 
knew  and  taught  that  men  would  wander  far 
afield  if  they  denied  themselves  the  guidance 
of  the  Divine  Spirit.  But  that  men,  in  the 
entirety  of  their  thought,  will,  emotion,  were 
alienated  from  God,  He  did  not  teach  for  one 
moment.  He  constantly  recognized  the  latent 
moral  energies  of  the  race.  In  the  light  of 
Jesus'  thought  we  may  propound  the  query 
with  no  fear  of  confusion,  if  men  and  women 


70  Jesus  :  The  World  Teacher, 

are  not  born  into  the  world  with  natures  ca- 
l)able  for  fellowship  and  co-operation  with 
God,  whence  then  the  source  of  their  cre- 
ation? 

Not  for  an  instant  do  we  attribute  in  our 
theology  the  work  of  creation  to  Satan,  the 
prince  of  darkness;  but  if  the  doctrine  of 
total  depravity  is  a  fact,  then  perforce  we 
must  conclude  that  God  is  not  the  Maker  of 
men. 

Jesus  was  luminous  in  His  doctrine  of 
man.  He  made  of  the  child  a  type  of  mem- 
bership in  the  kingdom  of  heaven.  His 
words,  ^SSuffer  the  little  children  to  come 
unto  Me,  and  forbid  them  not ;  for  of  such  is 
the  kingdom  of  God;"  ^'Except  ye  be  con- 
verted, and  become  as  little  children,  ye  shall 
not  enter  into  the  kingdom  of  heaven ;'' 
'' Whosoever  therefore  shall  humble  himself 
as  this  little  child,  the  same  is  the  greatest  in 
the  kingdom  of  heaven,''  are  worthy  of  all 
acceptation.  And  if  accepted,  logical  con- 
sistency demands  that  we  repudiate  the  harsh 
and  forbidding  doctrine  known  to  the  fathers 


PROGRESSIVENESS.  71 

of  a  few  decades  since  as  total  depravity. 
No  child  is  the  child  of  the  devil.  The  devil 
is  not  the  creator  of  men.  If  this  power  was 
Satanic,  we  can  not  imagine  Jesus  saying, 
^'Of  such  is  the  kingdom  of  God;"  ^^ Except 
ye  be  converted  and  become  as  little  children, 
ye  shall  not  enter  into  the  kingdom  of 
heaven."  Our  theology  must  quadrate  with 
the  Christ  Spirit,  else  it  must  be  relegated 
to  Lethean  waters.  Theories  are  reeds, 
which,  if  a  man  lean  upon,  pierce  the  hand, 
if  they  do  not  equate  with  facts.  ^  ^  Cost  what 
it  will,"  says  Thomas  Carlyle,  ^4t  behooves 
all  men  to  quit  simulacra  and  return  to  sub- 
stance. You  can  not  build  any  enduring  in- 
stitution out  of  quackery;  you  can  not  con- 
struct an  edifice,  except  by  plummet  and 
level,  at  right  angles  to  one  another." 

And  practical  life  declares  that  no  nature 
responds  to  kindliness  of  spirit  so  much  as 
the  child  nature.  Hence  it  is  that  tens  of 
millions  of  merry-hearted  children  throng  the 
Sunday-schools  of  Christendom.  He  who 
took  the  little  children  into  His  arms,  put  His 


72  Jesus  :  The  World  Teacher. 

bands  upon  them,  and  blessed  tbem,  bas 
never  yet  failed  to  evoke  the  loving  and  loyal 
yes  of  tbe  cbild  beart.  If  our  nature  is  cre- 
atively perverse,  sucb  a  disposition  would  be 
untbinkable.  Theological  syllogisms  are  pu- 
erile and  fatuous  if  contradicted  by  life  itself. 

In  the  parable  of  the  Prodigal  Son,  rightly 
designated  ''the  heart  of  the  Gospel,''  "the 
Bible  in  quintessence,"  ''the  pearl  of  par- 
ables,'' Jesus  makes  of  Himself  a  limner 
whose  lines  and  colors  transfix  the  mind  and 
heart  of  the  world.  The  picture  is  a  home: 
father  and  two  sons  living  in  happiest  ac- 
cord. The  younger  son,  without  warrant, 
misdirects  the  executive  faculty  of  his  na- 
ture, his  will,  and  determines  to  take  up  his 
abode  elsewhere.  The  father,  respecting  his 
son  as  a  creature,  not  of  automatism,  but 
of  freedom,  does  not  interiDOse.  With  his  liv- 
ing, the  wholeness  of  his  nature,  committed 
to  his  immature  knowledge,  the  young  man 
betakes  himself  into  a  far  country,  and  there 
yields  himself  to  a  lawless  manner  of  life. 

His  descent  is  rapid.    The  misuse  of  the 


Progressiveness.  73 

freedom  which  God  has  given  to  every  man 
is  invariably  lamentable  in  its  consequent. 
Degeneracy  in  nature,  degradation  of  pur- 
suit, desertion  by  friends,  proscription  by  all 
men,  followed  in  rapid  succession.  Isolated 
from  his  fellows,  in  tendance  on  a  herd  of 
swine,  the  young  man  bethinks  himself  of  his 
father's  house,  where  love  is  regnant,  where 
wisdom  utters  its  voice,  where  plenty 
abounds.  His  thought  is  reinforced  by  his 
will,  the  same  faculty  which  was  fundamental 
and  assertive  in  his  departure  from  the  pa- 
rental roof-tree,  and  he  at  once  wends  his 
way  homeward.  His  home-going  would  have 
meant  nothing  if  the  spirit  of  his  father  had 
undergone  a  change.  If  paternal  love  embit- 
tered had  become  malevolence,  the  approach 
of  the  wayward  boy  would  have  been  signal- 
ized by  a  tempestuous  rejection  of  every  pen- 
itential and  plaintive  overture.  But,  said 
Jesus,  while  the  son  was  yet  a  great  way  off 
the  father  saw  him,  had  compassion  on  him, 
ran  and  fell  on  his  neck  and  kissed  him.  At 
once,  without  a  preliminary,  the  repentant  son 


74  Jesus  :  The  Wokld  Teacher. 

was  reinstated  in  his  father's  household. 
This,  says  Jesus,  is  God's  love  toward  the 
children  of  His  liand  and  heart. 

The  theolog)^  of  the  parable  is  evident: 
Actual  members  of  the  Divine  household  are 
all  men  by  virtue  of  their  creation.  This 
actual  membership  is  never  forfeited  until 
the  individual  soul  by  voluntary  action  deter- 
mines to  pursue  its  own  way  regardless  of 
God's  will.  But  the  surrender  of  actual  son- 
ship,  according  to  the  parable,  does  not  in- 
validate man's  potential  sonship.  In  the 
midst  of  his  degradation  the  young  man  ex- 
claimed, ^^I  will  arise  and  go  to  my  father." 
His  return  was  potential  sonship  becoming 
actual.  If  our  theology  is  to  convince  the 
mind  and  influence  the  hearts  of  men,  it  must 
be  an  elaboration  of  the  mind  of  Jesus,  hav- 
ing pre-eminently  as  its  point  of  departure 
the  parable  of  the  Prodigal  Son.  The  love  of 
God  must  always  be  co-ordinate  with  His 
mind  and  will. 

To  recapitulate:  Jesus  as  a  diviner  of 
tendencies,  a  seer  of  all  thought  and  action 


Progressiveness.  75 

as  initiation  not  finality,  an  appreciator  of 
the  past,  a  utilizer  of  the  present,  a  fore- 
looker  into  the  future,  the  world's  brother 
man,  the  interpreter  of  the  Divine  mind  and 
heart,  was  pre-eminently  progressive.  He 
saturated  the  thought  of  His  day  and  suc- 
ceeding days  with  the  utmost  sanity.  For 
this  reason  He  lives  more  potently  to-day 
than  when  He  trod  the  heights  and  depres- 
sions of  the  hills  and  valleys  of  Palestine. 
And  He  shall  live  in  ever-increasing  ratio 
in  the  centuries  that  are  yet  unborn.  And 
whence  this  limitless  progress  of  His  thought 
and  character?  We  answer  in  the  evangelic 
word,  ^'In  the  beginning  was  the  Divine 
Eeason— and  the  Divine  Reason  was  made 
fiesh,  and  dwelt  among  us,  and  we  beheld  His 
glory.'' 


Chapter  III. 
SYMBOLISM 


"  Men  of  Athens,  I  honor  and  love  you;  but  I  shall  obey 
God  rather  than  you,  and,  while  I  have  life  and  strength,  I 
shall  never  cease  from  the  practice  and  teaching  of  philoso- 
phy exhorting  every  one  whom  I  meet  after  my  manner, 
and  convincing  him,  saying :  *  O,  my  friend,  why  do  you, 
who  are  a  citizen  of  the  great  and  mighty  and  wise  city  of 
Athens,  care  so  much  about  laying  up  the  greatest  amount 
of  money  and  honor  and  reputation,  and  so  little  about  wis- 
dom and  truth  and  the  greatest  improvement  of  the  soul, 
which  you  never  regard  or  heed  at  all  ?'  " 

—SOCRATES. 


Life  is  too  short  to  waste 

In  critic  peep  or  cynic  bark. 
Quarrel  or  reprimand : 

'T  will  soon  be  dark ; 
Up !  mind  thine  own  aim,  and 

God  speed  the  mark!" 

—RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON. 


78 


SYMBOLISM. 

I. 

That  Jesus  is  worthy  of  premiership 
among  the  poets,  ^^the  hierophants  of  an  -un- 
apprehended revelation, ' '  legitimate  criticism 
affirms.  He  had  the  poetic  instinct  and  in- 
sight. Prolixity  was  alien  to  His  thinking. 
Similes,  metonymies,  metaphors,  and  synec- 
doches dropped  from  His  lips  in  richest  pro- 
fusion. His  thought  was  tropical  in  its  lux- 
uriance. He  was  a  melodist  whose  sym- 
phonies and  cadences  are  like  the  music  of 
deep-toned  hells  and  the  roundelays  of  field 
larks.  The  inner  sense  of  persons  and  things 
found  in  Him  a  voice  both  charming  and  com- 
pelling. 

The  symbolist  is  the  real  poet.  Before 
him  the  secret  of  the  universe  lies  open.  He 
bows  before  the  sacred  mystery.  He  walks 
the  earth  with  unshod  feet.    He  is  conscious 

79 


80  Jesus:  The  World  Teacher. 

of  all  ground  being  holy  ground.  In  stone,  in 
sea,  in  cloud,  in  fire,  in  bird,  in  beast,  in  man, 
he  beholds  the  divine  idea.  Appearances  are 
not  for  him  a  finality.  They  are  symbolic  of 
finality. 

The  heavens,  the  earth,  the  sea,  and  all 
that  in  them  is,  are  the  realized  thought  of 
God.  The  prophets  were  symbolists,  poets  of 
superior  rank.  In  their  eye  the  mountains, 
the  rivers,  the  shepherds,  the  men-of-war,  the 
great  deep,  the  stars,  the  sun,  the  sheep,  the 
winds,  the  clouds,  were  rej^resentative  of  the 
Infinite  Mind  and  Will.  The  symbolic  qual- 
ity of  things  spatial  and  temporal  lifts  the 
world  of  finitude  into  the  realm  of  infinitude. 
It  is  the  transfiguration  of  the  finite  when  it 
vocalizes  the  infinite.  Materialistic  thought 
is  content  with  the  lowest  terms  for  its  vocal- 
ization. Religious  thought  demands  the  high- 
est terms  of  life  for  its  vocalization. 

Mr.  Emerson,  in  his  essay  on  ^'Pru- 
dence," makes  this  fine  discrimination: 
''There  are  all  degrees  of  proficiency  in 
knowledge  of  the  world.    It  is  sufficient  to  i^- 


Symbolism.  81 

dicate  three.  One  class  live  to  the  utility 
of  the  symbol,  esteeming  health  and  wealth 
a  final  good.  Another  class  live  above  this 
work  to  the  beauty  of  the  symbol,  as  the  poet, 
the  artist,  the  naturalist,  the  man  of  science. 
A  third  class  live  above  the  beauty  of  the 
symbol  to  the  beauty  of  the  thing  signified; 
these  are  the  wise  men.  The  first  class  have 
common  sense;  the  second,  taste;  the  third, 
spiritual  perception." 

Jesus  was  not  willing  to  rest  for  the  frac- 
tion of  a  moment  in  the  utility  of  the  symbol, 
nor  the  beauty  of  the  symbol.  It  was  the 
beauty  of  the  thing  signified  which  com- 
manded His  thought.  Utility  and  taste  He 
did  not  decry,  but  spiritual  perception  He 
magnified.  Through  every  chink  and  cranny 
of  the  universe  He  saw  the  bursting  forth  of 
the  splendor  and  goodness  of  God.  In  every 
crude  and  barbaric  son  of  man  He  saw  the 
latency  of  the  kingdom  of  heaven.  Bread  He 
did  not  esteem  as  bread,  nor  water  as  water, 
nor  seed  as  seed.  The  lily  He  did  not  esteem 
for  its  beauty,  nor  was  He  caught  up  in  ec- 

6 


82  Jesus  :  The  W^orld  Teacher. 

stasy  because  of  the  exceeding  brilliancy  of 
Sim  or  star.  It  was  the  bread,  the  lily,  the 
water,  the  seed,  the  sun,  symbolically  es- 
teemed, which  made  Him  eloquently  persua- 
sive in  speech.  It  was  the  transcendent  sim- 
plicity and  energy  of  spiritual  truth  which 
inspired  His  utterance  in  synagogue,  in  high- 
way, at  festal  board,  and  made  His  ministry 
among  men  invincible.  The  resistlessness  of 
His  thought  is  indicated  in  the  evangelistic 
record,  ^^  All  bore  Him  witness,  and  wondered 
at  the  gracious  words  which  proceeded  out 
of  His  mouth;"  ''Whence  hath  this  Man  this 
wisdom?"  "Never  man  spake  like  this  Man." 

The  final  virtue  of  the  senses  Jesus  repudi- 
ated. The  world  of  mere  sight,  sound,  touch, 
taste,  smell.  He  knew  to  be  a  mere  world  of 
representation.  The  subaltern  office  of  the 
sensual  nature  He  was  keenly  cognizant  of. 
As  an  existence  sufficient  in  itself.  He  gave  it 
no  credence.  The  legitimacy  of  the  senses 
He  accepted  only  as  the  temporal  and  spatial 
unfolding  of  the  incarnate  soul. 

Symbolism  in  its  reality  is  thought  formu- 


Symbolism,  83 

lation  by  a  mind  that  has  penetrated  into  the 
inmost  heart  of  things ;  that  has  detected  the 
mystery  of  all  life;  that  has  discovered  an 
abiding  unity  in  the  midst  of  apparent  de- 
tachment. 

Pythagoras  and  his  devotees  fabled  of 
sphere  harmonies.  In  their  thinking  they 
builded  better  than  they  knew.  The  atheistic 
dictum  that  the  heaving  sea,  the  unbridled 
winds,  the  perturbations  of  men,  comprise 
the  inner  structure  of  nature,  they  renounced. 
The  primal  element  of  thought  and  thing, 
said  this  philosophic  and  poetic  school,  is 
harmony ;  the  soul  of  the  universe  is  musical. 
Only  see  deep  enough,  said  they,  and  you 
see  music.  Worldly  prudence,  or  the  wis- 
dom that  looks  to  the  mere  utility  of  the  sym- 
bol, devotes  itself  to  things  material,  and 
vociferates  the  primacy  of  things  as  they  are. 
Stone  is  stone,  cloud  is  cloud,  flesh  is  flesh, 
gold  is  gold,  and  nothing  more  nor  less.  A 
discerning  thinker  asseverates  that  such  a 
prudence  is  a  disease  like  the  thickening  of 
the  skin  until  the  vital  organs  are  destroyed. 


84  Jesus:  The  World  Teacher. 

The  fimdamenta  of  life  are  spiritual,  but  the 
wisdom  which  is  of  the  earth,  earthy,  recog- 
nizes only  the  phenomena  of  matter.  Matter, 
force,  and  motion  are  its  triune  Deity. 

The  upper  ranges  of  life,  remarks  Pro- 
fessor Goldwin  Smith  in  his  ''In  Quest  of 
Light,"  demand  interpretation  no  less  than 
the  lower  levels  of  experience.  The  symbol- 
ist penetrates  the  apparent  incrustation  of 
the  sensuous  nature,  and  affirms  the  primacy 
of  spirit.  Love,  truth,  righteousness,  are 
basilar  in  all  life,  and  the  sensuous  manifes- 
tations of  life  derive  their  value  solely 
through  their  relatedness  to  love,  truth,  and 
righteousness.     Thus  Jesus  affirmed. 

11. 
The  parabolic  form  which  Jesus  gave  to 
His  teaching  is  an  evidence  that  He  absorbed 
into  His  thought-sphere  all  the  light  which 
was  anywhere  radiating.  No  sensual  good 
was  regarded  by  Him  as  substantial  that  was 
unrelated  to  the  soul.  His  appreciation  of 
the  leaven,  mustard-seed,  harvest-field,  hid- 


Symbolism.  85 

den  treasure,  bread,  water,  piece  of  silver, 
was  based  on  tbeir  relatedness  in  thongbt  to 
the  experiences  of  life  in  its  best  estate. 

The  Phoenician  tradesman,  the  Jewish 
Tisnrer,  the  rapacious  Eoman,  saw  in  the 
golden  talent  material  value  only.  Jesus  saw 
in  the  talent  the  symbol  of  individual  wealth, 
and  in  the  talent  committed  to  the  servant 
He  saw  the  symbol  of  individual  moral  re- 
sponsibility. According  to  Jesus,  individual 
life  multiplied  is  the  only  legitimate  inter- 
pretation to  individual  endowment.  Self- 
investment  is  the  order  of  all  being.  It  is 
the  perpetuity  of  life.  Non-investment  of 
self  issues  in  moral  and  spiritual  decease. 
Except  a  grain  of  wheat  fall  into  the  ground 
and  die,  it  abideth  alone;  but  if  it  die,  if  it 
invests  itself,  it  brings  forth  much  fruit.  The 
talent  and  the  grain  of  wheat  Jesus  meta- 
morphosed into  efficient  personality.  He 
made  them  live.  He  gave  to  them  a  vascular 
system.  He  ordered  them,  in  the  form  of 
flesh  and  blood,  to  stand  and  go. 

Life,  according  to  this  view-point,  takes 


86  Jesus  :  The  World  Teacher. 

its  value  oi'  noD-vulue  from  the  use  wlilch  we 
make  of  it.  Hoarding  is  disallowed.  The 
wealth  of  the  material  globe  would  surcease 
if  hoarding  were  the  fundamental  order.  Only 
through  giving  do  we  receive.  Bountiful 
sowing  has  as  its  consequent  bountiful  reap- 
ing. The  perennial  program  physically  is  ex- 
penditure prior  to  enrichment.  The  perpe- 
tuity of  art,  literature,  science,  government, 
industry,  religion,  would  be  pabulum  for  the 
lictionist  if  mental  and  moral  investment 
came  to  a  close.  ^'This  book,"  said  Dante, 
referring  to  his  ^^ Divine  Comedy,"  *'has 
made  me  lean  for  many  years."  ^'Ah,  yes," 
says  Thomas  Carlyle,  ^'it  was  won,  all  of  it, 
with  pain  and  sore  toil— not  in  sport,  but  in 
grim  earnest.  His  book,  as  indeed  most  good 
books  are,  was  written  in  many  senses  with 
his  heart's  blood." 

The  paradox  of  life  is :  individual  invest- 
ment for  the  common  good  is,  in  the  sum- 
mary of  life,  the  highest  realization  of  self- 
hood. Jesus,  in  His  parables,  emphasized 
always  the  integration  of  manhood.    He  in- 


Symbolism.  87 

sisted  on  tlae  whole  being  greater  than  the 
sum  of  its  parts.  The  hand,  the  foot,  the  eye, 
are  functionless  only  through  their  member- 
ship in  the  body.  The  individual  is  function- 
less,  according  to  Jesus'  word,  save  through 
His  membership  in  the  social  body.  Lose 
your  life  for  the  highest  ends,  and  you  save 
it;  save  your  life  for  selfish  ends,  and  you 
lose  it,  is  the  word  of  social  science  no  less 
than  the  word  of  Jesus. 

*'  The  wood  and  wave  each  other  know, 
Not  unrelated,  unaffied, 
But  to  each  thought  and  thing  allied, 
Is  perfect  Nature's  every  part. 
Rooted  in  the  mighty  Heart." 


III. 

The  fixedness  and  unfixedness  of  char- 
acter Jesus  saw  in  the  building  of  the  houses 
on  the  rock  and  on  the  sand.  In  every  pos- 
sible condition  and  circumstance  of  life  the 
constructive  genius  of  men  avers  itself.  The 
man  of  real  wisdom  builds  not  for  favorable 
winds,  for  gentle  dews,  for  placid  waters,  but 


88  Jesus  :  The  World  Teacher. 

for  the  fury  of  Boreas,  the  peltings  of  Plu- 
vius,  the  titanic  antagonisms  of  Neptune. 

The  right  angle  to  each  other  of  the  plum- 
met and  the  surface  of  the  earth  can  not  be 
maintained  by  the  house  which  rests  on  shift- 
ing sand.  This  maintenance  is  only  possible 
on  the  enduring  and  impregnable  rock. 

New  York  City  may  laugh  at  Triton  and 
his  wreathed  horn,  at  ^olus  and  his  bag  of 
winds,  because  of  the  granitic  quality  of  Man- 
hattan Island. 

Jesus  saw  enduring  character  to  be  the 
desideratum  of  all  endeavor  and  belief.  All 
else  in  life,  from  His  angle  of  vision,  is  tinsel 
and  wrappage,  simulacher,  not  substance. 
The  foolish  man,  the  man  of  unfixedness, 
builded  on  the  sand.  His  end  is  always  ruin. 
The  man  of  character  is  not  under  the  domi- 
nance of  things  visible.  He  esteems  fact 
greater  than  fiction,  performance  greater 
than  pretense,  rectitude  greater  than  relig- 
iosity. He  does  not  tremble  before  the  Eu- 
menides,  nor  does  he  shrink  at  the  fulmina- 
tions  of  a  papal  bull.     The  menacing  atti- 


Symbolism.  89 

tudes  of  public  opinion  and  the  fiery  objur- 
gations of  an  inquisitor  fail  to  make  him 
quake.  He  unhorses  poverty,  contumely,  and 
audacious  assault.  His  rectitude  is  a  per- 
petual victory,  celebrated  not  by  the  blazonry 
of  trumpet  nor  by  the  brilliancy  of  flam- 
beaux, but  by  a  singular  serenity  which  is 
joy  habitual. 

The  symbol  of  the  house  builded  on  the 
rock  gives  to  character  a  centrality.  The 
possibility  of  the  rock  being  displaced  or 
overset  is  nil.  Rock  is  the  final  expression 
of  the  law  of  crystallization.  It  is  at  one 
with  the  foundations  of  the  earth.  ^^The 
strength  of  the  hills, '^  ^^the  mountains  girded 
with  power,''  are  metaphorical  personifica- 
tions by  the  Hebrew  prophet.  Jesus  in  the 
employment  of  this  symbol  gives  to  character 
a  sense  of  mass.  The  individual  stratum  of 
the  Apennines  or  Alleghanies  does  not  have 
for  us  a  clamant  voice.  It  is  the  rocky  mass, 
the  innumerable  stratifications,  which  com- 
mand our  thought.  Character  as  mass  re- 
sists successfully  conventional  opinions  and 


90  Jesus  :  The  World  Teacher. 

practices.  It  resists  successfully  principal- 
ities, powers,  the  wiles  of  the  devil.  Jesus  in 
Himself  wrought  upon  the  world's  thought 
and  action  as  did  no  other  because  of  the  cen- 
trality  of  His  character.  As  no  other  of  the 
world's  figures,  He  gives  to  us  a  sense  of 
mass.  The  house  builded  on  the  rock  is  the 
character  builded  on  Him  who  was  God  mani- 
fest in  the  flesh. 

IV. 

The  symbolic  thought  of  Jesus  finds  a 
vivid  expression  in  the  parable  of  the  Sower 
and  the  Seed.  This  parabolic  utterance  is  a 
suggestive  study  in  moral  attitudes. 

In  the  wayside  hearer,  the  hearer  from 
whose  mind  Satan  immediately  stole  the 
word,  the  attitude  of  indifference  is  seen. 
Plato  was  not  far  afield  when  he  declared 
that  all  misdoing  had  its  beginning  in  stu- 
pidity. The  morally  indifferent  man  is  fun- 
damentally stupid.  He  is  the  foolish  man 
of  whom  the  prophet  wrote,  '^The  fool  hath 
said  in  his  heart,  There  is  no  Q-od."    Plung- 


Symbolism.  91 

ing  through  life  like  a  blind  beast  feasting 
and  fattening  himself,  he  eliminates  God 
from  his  thought  through  his  persistent  stu- 
pidity. 

Such  a  hearer  lacks  in  conviction.  In 
him  a  spiritual  atrophy  is  operative.  The 
soul  which  should  be  keenly  alert  to  spiritual 
truth  is  lamentably  nonchalant.  In  the  forces 
which  make  for  righteousness  he  is  a  negli- 
gible quantity. 

The  seed  sown  upon  the  rocky  soil,  unable 
to  endure  the  fierce  beating  of  an  Oriental 
sun,  is  a  study  in  the  superficial  moral  atti- 
tude. AVith  joy  this  hearer  received  the 
word,  but  the  oncoming  of  tribulations  and 
X)ersecutions  offended  him.  He  gave  the 
word  of  the  kingdom  room,  but  allowed  no 
place  for  root.  He  was  a  man  of  superficies, 
not  centrality.  He  had  extent,  but  no  intent. 
In  his  powers  of  resistance  he  is  molluscan. 
Such  lusty  opponents  as  tribulation  and  per- 
secution are  too  hard  for  him.  Primrose 
paths  of  dalliance  such  men  and  women  seek 
to  tread.     The  disciplinary  quality  of  life 


92  Jesus:  The  World  Teacher. 

they  do  not  esteem.  The  pamperings  of  the 
Sybarite  appeal  to  them  with  siren  voice. 
Life  they  construe  as  ease  rather  than  ef- 
fort, apathy  rather  than  action,  helplessness 
rather  than  hardihood.  Superficial  moral 
character  finds  its  genesis  in  the  giving  of 
undue  emphasis  to  one  faculty  of  our  three- 
fold nature.  Psychically  we  are  creatures  of 
thought,  will,  and  emotion.  To  magnify  or 
minify  any  one  of  these  faculties  at  the  ex- 
pense of  the  other  is  to  incur  moral  jeopardy. 
Jesus  directs  our  attention  to  the  blunder 
made  by  this  hearer.  With  joy  he  received 
the  word  of  the  kingdom.  Evidently  he  gave 
the  place  of  primacy  to  his  emotional  fac- 
ulty. His  relationship  to  God  and  man  he 
based  upon  his  sensibility.  Thought  and  will 
he  manifestly  abjured.  Had  he  given  to 
them  their  legitimate  office,  tribulation  and 
persecution  would  have  been  deprived  of 
their  offensive  efficiency.  Neither  emotion- 
alism, nor  will  capacity,  nor  intellectual- 
ism,  in  itself,  avouches  spiritual  integrity. 
The  integration  of  manhood  implies  thought 


Symbolism.  93 

activity,  plus  will  activity,  plus  emotional  ac- 
tivity. Jesus  always  insisted  upon  the  re- 
sponsiveness of  the  whole  man  to  the  word 
of  the  kingdom. 

The  affirmation  of  synthetic  selfhood 
means  root  for  the  seed  as  well  as  room,  in- 
tensity of  purpose  as  well  as  extent. 

The  seed  sown  upon  the  ground  in  which 
thorns  were  latent  is  a  study  in  spiritual  non- 
expansiveness,  in  moral  abortiveness.  This 
hearer  would  give  root  to  the  word  of  the 
kingdom,  but  not  room.  He  is  a  believer  in 
spiritual  dwarfism,  rather  than  fullness  of 
spiritual  stature.  The  latent  thorns,  said 
Jesus,  by  and  by  sprang  up  and  choked  the 
word,  and  it  became  unfruitful. 

The  thorns  symbolize,  in  the  thought  of 
Jesus,  worldly  cares  and  deceitful  riches. 
Total  surrender  of  one's  self  to  trade,  or  to 
art,  or  to  government,  or  to  invention,  or  to 
any  worldly  pursuit  or  wealth  acquisition,  is 
the  sure  strangulation  of  our  higher  and  bet- 
ter nature.    We  can  not  by  any  legerdemain 


94  Jesus  :  The  World  Teacher. 

produce  character  through  worldly  method. 
The  world  is  our  scene  of  activity.  It  is  in 
itself  wholly  impersonal.  To  yield  ourselves 
to  it  is  to  surrender  personality,  to  give  pre- 
eminence to  thinghood,  to  materialize  mind. 
Suffering  ourselves  to  be  morally  choked  by 
the  cares  of  the  world  and  the  fraudulency 
of  riches,  we  renounce  the  spiritual  quality 
of  life.  Individual  initiative,  with  its  power 
of  permutation  and  combination,  we  relegate 
to  desuetude.  Such  a  relegation  is  the  trav- 
esty of  selfhood. 

The  inspired  word,  ^^Thou  madest  man 
to  have  dominion  over  the  works  of  Thy 
hands;  Thou  hast  put  all  things  under  his 
feet,^'  is  disavowed  when  worldly  worry  and 
wealth  choke  the  divine  seed  sown  in  our 
hearts.  Personality  can  only  come  to  its  full- 
ness of  stature,  to  its  divinely  appointed 
fruitfulness,  by  the  coincidence  of  extent  with 
intent,  of  room  with  root.  Japanese  horti- 
culturists busy  themselves  with  some  fre- 
quency in  dwarfing  plants  and  trees  whose 
normal  nature  is  one  of  largeness.    The  oak 


Symbolism.  95 

they  often  convert  into  a  woodland  pygmy 
by  denying  to  it  room. 

Against  this  moral  abortiveness,  this  spir- 
itual non-expansiveness,  Jesus  admonishes  us 
in  symbolic  speech.  The  seed  sown  in  the 
good  ground,  and  multiplying  itself  beyond 
geometrical  ratio,  is  representative  of  the 
good  and  honest  heart  in  a  receiving  and  re- 
sponsive attitude.  It  is  the  finite  mind 
clothed  in  humility  in  the  presence  of  the 
Infinite  Mind.  It  is  man,  the  child,  giving 
glad  acceptance  to  the  will  of  God,  the 
Father.  According  to  Jesus,  this  should  be 
the  true  and  abiding  attitude  of  all  men. 

Such  a  mental  and  moral  disposition 
makes  effective  God's  purpose  concerning 
our  translation  from  darkness  to  light,  from 
sin  unto  righteousness.  The  good  and  honest 
heart  receiving  the  word  of  the  kingdom,  and 
bringing  forth  fruit  with  patience,  is  morally 
alert.  It  is  profound  in  its  acceptance  of  the 
Divine  Will.  It  is  extensive  while  intensive. 
It  gives  root  and  room  to  the  thought  of  God. 
Thought,  will,  and  emotion  are  in  continual 


96  Jesus:  The  World  Teacher. 

co-operation,  and  soul  expansiveness  is  cher- 
ished as  an  ever-present  ideal.  Fruitfulness 
is  the  legitimate  and  inevitable  outcome  of 
such  a  moral  attitude. 


V. 

A  study  in  spiritual  affinity  is  given  to 
us  by  Jesus  in  the  simile  of  the  leaven  and 
the  meal.  *^The  kingdom  of  heaven  is  like 
unto  leaven  which  a  woman  took  and  hid  in 
three  measures  of  meal,  till  the  whole  was 
leavened. ' ' 

Between  the  leaven  and  the  meal  there 
was  a  bond  of  union  which  derided  every  con- 
ceivable antagonism.  Their  natures  were  in 
correspondence.  No  genius  of  man  could  set 
aside  their  affinity  for  each  other  without 
totally  destroying  their  respective  natures. 
As  long  as  leaven  is  leaven  and  meal  is  meal, 
their  contact  means  unity,  and  this  unity  is 
synonymous  with  transmutation.  The  meal 
finds  a  higher  selfhood,  indeed  its  true  self- 
hood, through  its  union  with  the  leaven,  and 


Symbolism.  97 

the  leaven  enters  into  a  completeness  of  life 
through  its  combination  with  the  meal.  This 
figure  is  suggestive.  The  kingdom  of  heaven, 
expressed  in  terms  of  incarnate  love,  incar- 
nate truth,  incarnate  righteousness,  can  not 
do  other  than  leaven  the  whole  of  humankind 
when  contact  is  effected. 

Between  man  in  his  lowest  estate  and  the 
kingdom  of  heaven  as  expressed  in  the  above 
terms  there  is  a  bond  of  union  in  latency 
which  holds  in  disdain  every  thinkable  op- 
position. The  African  Kaffir,  the  Sandwich 
Islander  affirm  this  truth  as  really  as  Jona- 
than Edwards  and  Florence  Nightingale. 

A  latent  correspondence  there  is  between 
all  men  and  the  kingdom  of  heaven.  Man 
must  be  other  than  man,  and  love,  truth,  and 
righteousness  other  than  their  nature,  to  de- 
feat this  agreement.  Brought  into  contact, 
a  union  ensues,  and  this  union  is  synonymous 
with  transmutation.  Humanity  finds  its 
highest  selfhood  only  when  wholly  leavened 
with  the  principles  of  the  kingdom  of  heaven. 
Only  then  does  it  show  that  beneficence  for 
7 


98  Jesus:  The  World  Teacher. 

which  ^'the  whole  creation  groaneth  and 
travaileth  in  pain  together  until  now." 

No  man  with  impunity  can  ignore  the 
chemical  combinations  of  the  physical  world. 
Life  and  death  inhere  in  their  affinities  and 
non-affinities.  The  man  of  sanity  makes  it 
his  study  by  day  and  by  night  to  effect  a 
league  offensive  and  defensive  with  every 
physical  and  spiritual  element  in  God's 
world.  It  is  his  intent  to  live,  move,  and  have 
his  being  in  harmony  with  Infinite  Wisdom. 
His  spirit  is  co-operative.  The  leaven  and 
the  meal  symbolize  the  co-operative  spirit.  A 
higher  selfhood  is  the  resultant  of  co-opera- 
tion, whether  in  the  material  or  moral  world. 

Jesus  in  this  parable  preaches  the  doc- 
trine of  co-working,  of  union  for  higher  ends, 
of  obedience  to  the  fundamental  principles  of 
our  Father's  world.  An  inattentive  ear  to 
this  doctrine  means  death  to  the  moral  and 
spiritual  efficiency  of  personality.  Leaven 
separate  and  apart  from  the  meal  is  fit  for 
nothing  but  to  be  cast  out  and  trodden  under 
foot  of  men.    Meal  separate  and  apart  from 


Symbolism.  99 

the  leaven  is  savorless,  and  therefore  of  no 
value. 

Humanity  takes  its  value  from  its  union 
with  love,  truth,  and  righteousness,  the  un- 
derlying principles  of  the  kingdom  of  heaven. 
And  with  strict  consonance  with  the  New 
Testament  Scriptures  we  may  say  that  the 
kingdom  of  heaven  finds  its  completed  work 
in  the  transmutation  of  the  sons  of  men  into 
the  sons  of  God. 

VI. 

The  function  and  non-function  of  the  visi- 
ble Church  Jesus  symbolized  in  the  parable 
of  the  net  cast  into  the  sea.  ^^The  kingdom 
of  heaven  is  like  unto  a  net  that  was  cast 
into  the  sea,  and  gathered  of  every  kind; 
which,  when  it  was  full,  they  drew  to  shore, 
and  sat  down  and  gathered  the  good  into 
vessels,  but  cast  the  bad  away.  So  shall  it 
be  at  the  end  of  the  world:  the  angels  shall 
come  forth  and  sever  the  wicked  from  among 
the  just.'' 

From  this  parable  it  is  evident  that  the 


100         Jesus  :  The  World  Teacher. 

function  of  the  visible  Church  is  to  cast  the 
net  and  gather  of  every  kind;  but  the  work 
of  assortment,  of  adjudication,  is  not  as- 
signed to  fallible  men.  The  preaching  of  the 
gospel,  the  discipling  of  all  nations,  the  gath- 
ering of  every  kind,  is  our  work.  The  pro- 
nouncement of  judgment  as  to  the  good  and 
the  bad,  the  saved  or  the  unsaved,  is  not  the 
office  of  the  visible  Church. 

Romanism  has  made  of  religion  a  byword 
and  a  hissing  by  arrogating  to  itself  this  work 
of  supererogation.  Fallible  man  is  not  com- 
petent to  sit  in  final  judgment  on  fallible  man. 
The  function  of  the  visible  Church  is  work. 
It  is  not  judgment. 

Protestantism  is  slowly  but  surely  surren- 
dering its  negative  office  of  judge  and  ruler 
over  men,  and  assuming  the  larger  and  posi- 
tive office  of  servant  unto  men.  In  so  doing 
it  is  reproducing  the  spirit  of  Jesus ;  for  He 
came  into  the  world,  not  to  condemn  men, 
but  to  save  them ;  not  to  be  ministered  unto, 
but  to  minister. 

Gradually  we  are  approximating  in  our 


SYMBOi^ISM.  101 

practice  the  good  word,  ^^  Whosoever  will  be 
chief  among  you,  let  him  be  your  servant." 

VII. 

As  a  symbolist,  Jesus  performed  a  work 
of  liberation.  He  opened  the  prison  doors 
for  the  talent,  the  rock,  the  seed,  the  leaven, 
the  lost  sheep.  From  their  physical  incar- 
ceration He  took  them,  and  made  them  uni- 
versal in  their  relatedness.  As  representa- 
tions they  became  of  value  in  the  kingdom  of 
heaven. 

Henceforth  no  man  can  look  upon  the 
rugged  breast  of  the  mountain  range,  upon 
the  mal-odor  of  the  leaven,  the  inartistic 
fish-net,  the  infinitesimal  mustard-seed,  with 
an  unpoetic  or  provincial  eye.  Jesus  brought 
to  the  open  the  inner  sense  of  birds,  flowers, 
stones,  seed,  leaven,  net,  and  fish.  The  par- 
ables of  Jesus  are  the  conversion  of  all  life, 
organized  and  unorganized,  into  universal 
language.  Newer  and  higher  facts  through 
His  imaginative  faculty  issued  from  the  va- 
rious economies  of  life.    In  Jesus'  thought 


102         Jesus  :  The  World  Teacher. 

the  soul  was  fundamental,  and  the  highest 
function  of  all  things  else  was  to  speak  the 
language  of  the  soul. 

Between  the  wheat-fields  of  Palestine  and 
the  nations  of  the  earth,  between  the  wayside 
rock  and  ethical  character,  between  the  mus- 
tard-seed and  the  possibilities  of  the  kingdom 
of  heaven,  Jesus  established  a  subtle  spiritual 
connection.  The  representations  of  the  Di- 
vine idea  of  God's  ruling  purpose  concerning 
men  He  discerned  in  every  aspect  of  life. 
His  figures  of  speech  are  of  incomparably 
greater  value  for  us  than  those  of  Virgil,  or 
Goethe,  or  Wordsworth,  or  Milton,  or 
Shakespeare,  because  of  the  inapproachable 
Divineness  of  His  nature.  Wielding  Deific 
power,  He  made  free  with  the  most  imposing 
and  formidable  phenomena  of  the  physical 
universe.  The  law  of  gravity  He  held  in 
abeyance  when  He  walked  upon  the  ciystal 
waters  of  Gennesaret  with  the  sure  and  firm- 
set  tread  of  one  walking  upon  the  solid  globe. 
He  tossed  in  His  hand  the  law  of  chemical 
combination    in    the    multiplication    of    the 


Symbolism.  103 

loaves  and  the  fishes  with  the  same  abandon 
as  the  boy  who  playfully  tosses  his  ball.  The 
repulsions  of  matter  He  rebuked  as  a  military 
chief  would  reprove  a  subsordinate,  when  He 
commanded  Lazarus,  the  brother  of  Mary 
and  Martha,  after  four  days  of  interment, 
to  come  forth. 

In  the  moral  universe  He  is  the  overtow- 
ering  personality  of  the  ages.  The  civiliza- 
tions that  withstand  political  and  social 
shocks,  that  are  in  the  vanguard  of  the 
world's  progress,  that  emphasize  equality, 
justice,  liberty,  fraternity  among  men,  assign 
to  Him  with  joyous  acclaim  the  place  of 
moral  and  spiritual  headship.  Beyond  all 
peradventure.  He  is  the  Captain  of  all  na- 
tional salvation. 

To  outline  His  authority  and  power  in  in- 
dividual life  reduces  all  speech  to  beggary. 
He  is  the  true  regenerator  of  souls.  New 
confidences,  new  affections,  new  enthusiasms. 
He  communicates  to  men.  He  alone  is  the 
discoverer  of  the  moral  potentialities  of  the 
race.     The  individual  finds  his  possibilities 


104         Jesus  :  The  World  Teacher. 

actualized  when  he  comes  into  living  contact 
with  Jesus  Christ. 

Jesus  is  the  symphonist  of  the  soul.  He 
extracted  music  from  the  mind  and  heart  of 
Zaccheus,  the  public  plunderer;  from  Saul, 
the  self-sufficient  Pharisee;  from  Augustine, 
the  lecher;  from  Wesley,  the  formalist,— sur- 
passing in  concord  that  extracted  by  Ole  Bull 
from  the  repulsive  catgut,  or  by  Mozart  from 
the  dull  metal. 

Because  of  the  worth  of  His  personality, 
His  words  become  a  salient  energy.  The  sym- 
bolisms of  His  thought  do  not  at  any  time 
suggest  a  riotous  imagination.  But  they 
rather  suggest  a  profound  philosophy,  in  the 
adoption  of  which  is  found  life  abundant. 
The  idealism  of  Jesus  is  unconcealed  in  all 
of  His  figures,  but  it  is  an  idealism  which  His 
ministry  among  men  made  exceedingly  prac- 
tical. 


Chapter  IV. 
RELIGION. 


'For  still  the  new  transcends  the  old 
In  signs  and  wonders  manifold ; 
We  need  but  open  eye  and  ear 
To  see  God's  mysteries  always  here. 

'*  Through  the  harsh  noises  of  our  day 
A  low,  sweet  prelude  finds  its  way. 
Through  clouds  of  doubt  and  creeds  of  fear, 
A  light  is  breaking  calm  and  clear. 

*'  Henceforth  my  heart  shall  sigh  no  more 
For  olden  times  and  holier  shore; 
God's  love  and  blessing,  then  and  there, 
Are  now,  and  here,  and  everywhere." 

—JOHN  G.  WHITTIER. 


Perhaps  the  bitterest  experience  in  the  life  of  the  Teacher 
of  Galilee  was  the  eagerness  with  which  the  crowds  looked 
for  miracles,  the  apathy  with  which  they  listened  to  truth. 

—HAMILTON  WRIGHT  MABIE. 

106 


EELIGION. 

I. 

As  THE  interpreter  of  religion,  Jesus  did 
not  divest  nature  of  its  divine  quality,  nor 
did  He  deprive  the  supernatural  of  its  natu- 
ral expression.  He  recognized  continuously 
the  presence  of  law  in  God's  world,  and  He 
acknowledged  always  the  presence  of  God  in 
the  working  of  law.  Upon  no  occasion  did 
He  give  a  mechanical,  self-sufficient  interpre- 
tation to  the  universe,  and  at  no  time  did  He 
declare  that  haphazard  and  confusion 
wielded  sovereign  power.  We  have  yet  to 
learn  this  great  lesson  taught  by  the  Son  of 
God. 

We  insist  in  our  thinking  with  periodic 
frequency  on  the  reign  of  law  minus  God,  and 
then  we  swing  to  the  other  extreme  of  thought 
and  emphasize  the  Infinite  Presence  minus 
law.     At  one  time  we  are  what  Professor 

107 


108         Jesus  :  The  World  Teacher. 

Bowne  terms  ''bald  naturalists/^  and  at 
other  times  we  are  ''false  snpernaturalists/* 
Tt  is  of  inestimable  value  to  the  world  of 
thought  that  Jesus  on  no  occasion  gave  sanc- 
tion to  this  invalid  thinking. 

The  miracle-mongers  who  would  disre- 
gard the  normal  methods  of  Divine  activity 
did  not  win  Jesus  to  their  way  of  viewing 
things.  Neither  did  the  Sadducees,  the  first- 
century  materialists,  who  would  eliminate 
all  spirit  from  the  universe,  win  Him  to  their 
point  of  view.  Between  this  false  supernatu- 
ralism  and  false  naturalism  He  moved  with 
perfect  poise  of  mind  and  heart.  It  can  not 
be  gainsaid  that  the  sign  and  wonder  side  of 
God's  working  we  have  unduly  magnified. 
We  declare  His  might  in  the  thunder-cloud, 
the  volcanic  outburst,  the  tremors  of  the 
earth;  but  we  do  not  rightly  esteem  His 
might  in  the  serene  shining  of  the  sun,  in  the 
fruitage  of  the  tree,  in  the  beautiful  and  be- 
nign unfolding  of  a  human  soul. 

To  us  the  familiar  laws  of  nature  are 
often  alien  from  the  Divine  causality.    With 


Religion.  109 

the  perversity  of  the  obtuse  Jew  we  ask  con- 
tinually for  a  sign,  oblivious  of  the  never- 
ceasing  revelation  which  God  is  making  to  us 
in  the  operation  of  all  law.  The  wondrous 
potency  of  a  blind  and  purposeless  mechan- 
ism is  our  notion  of  the  ray  of  light,  the 
whispering  breeze,  the  flying  bird,  the  blos- 
soming flower,  the  mental  operations  of  a 
mature  mind,  and  the  far-reaching  plans  of 
a  modern  apostle.  Nature  we  establish  as  a 
rival  of  God.  The  miraculous,  the  extraor- 
dinary, God  accounts  for.  The  everyday- 
ness  of  life  is  accounted  for  by  ** Nature.'* 
We  see  God  in  the  prodigious  mathematical 
or  musical  faculty  of  an  untutored  child.  Re- 
ligiously we  most  clearly  discern  Him  in  the 
emotional  ebullience  of  a  camp-meeting  fre- 
quenter. 

The  entire  Christian  world  is  not  yet  a 
tenant  in  fee-simple  of  the  sanity  of  the  He- 
brew prophet  embodied  in  the  words,  **The 
heavens  declare  the  glory  of  God,  and  the 
firmament  sheweth  His  handiwork.  Day 
unto   day  uttereth   speech,    and   night   unto 


no        Jesus:  The  world  Teacher. 

night  sheweth  knowledge.  There  is  no  speech 
nor  language  where  their  voice  is  not  heard.'* 
''Who  coverest  Thyself  with  light  as  with  a 
garment ;  who  stretchest  out  the  heavens  like 
a  curtain;  who  maketh  the  clouds  His 
chariot;  who  walketh  upon  the  wings  of  the 
wind;"  ''He  watereth  the  hills  from  His 
chambers;"  "The  earth  is  satisfied  with  the 
fruit  of  Thy  works :  He  causeth  the  grass  to 
grow  for  the  cattle,  and  herb  for  the  service 
of  man,  that  He  may  bring  forth  food  out  of 
the  earth."  God  as  an  irruptionist  we  know, 
but  as  the  Creator  whose  creations  never 
cease,  we  do  not  always  concede. 

The  simplicity  and  naturalness  of  Jesus' 
life  astounded  the  spiritual  dullards  of  His 
day.  Of  a  Jewish  world-empire  they  dreamed. 
For  an  emancipation  from  the  authority  of 
Eome  they  entreated.  For  a  king  who  should 
surpass  in  magnificence  the  court  of  Caesar 
they  looked  with  sensuous  eye.  For  a  mighty 
upheaval,  political  and  economic,  they  were 
on  the  qui  vive.  Their  notion  of  God  was 
supernaturally  false.     They  were  unwilling 


Religion.  Ill 

to  utilize  the  endowment  of  mind  and  heart, 
and  the  daily  opportunity  for  service  which 
was  theirs  for  the  outworking  of  a  salvation, 
individual  and  national,  which  could  not  con- 
ceivably be  paralleled  by  any  liberation 
brought  by  an  earthly  ruler,  or  by  an 
economic  prestidigitator. 

Their  ideal  was  spurious  because  an- 
archic. And  the  Jewish  notion  of  the  Divine 
Causality  is  still  in  evidence  within  and  with- 
out the  Church  of  God.  The  passion  for  the 
spectacular,  for  the  show  of  the  senses,  is 
very  much  alive  to-day.  The  genuinely  con- 
verted man,  we  say,  is  the  man  converted  in 
the  amazing  fashion;  the  man  who  at  a  cer- 
tain hour,  on  a  certain  day,  of  a  certain 
month,  in  a  certain  year,  passed  through  the 
purifying  fires  of  an  intense  psychical  expe- 
rience. But  the  boy  or  girl  who  enters  the 
kingdom  of  God  through  the  medium  of  the 
Christian  home  and  the  Sunday-school  we 
often  stigmatize  as  still-born.  We  are  open- 
eyed  for  prodigies.    We  are  dull  of  eye  for 


112         Jesus  :  The  World  Teacher. 

the  normal  workings  of  the  ever-present  and 
ever-blessed  Spirit. 

The  immanence  of  God  in  the  earthquake, 
in  the  volcanic  explosion,  in  the  electrical 
discharges  of  the  thunder-cloud,  in  the  ex- 
traordinary musical  powers  of  Ole  Bull  at  ten 
years  of  age,  in  the  instantaneous  and  mar- 
velous regeneration  of  a  soul  matured  in  de- 
generacy, is  not  to  be  controverted.  The 
statement  of  Dr.  Lyman  Abbott  concerning 
the  miracle  side  of  the  universe  commands 
the  assent  of  sound  thinking :  ^  ^  What  in  our 
limitation  of  speech  we  call  miraculous,  is 
nothing  more  than  the  Infinite  Presence  and 
Power  in  unexpected  actions  demonstrating 
the  existence  of  an  intelligent  Will  and  Power 
superior  to  that  of  man. ' ' 

The  contention,  however  fully  justified  in 
the  light  of  the  Incarnate  Son  of  God,  is  that 
which  emphasizes  the  Infinite  Presence  and 
Power  in  the  everydayness  of  life,  in  the 
perennial  operation  of  law.  This  contention 
never  fails  to  inspire  and  renew  the  souls  of 
men.    But  assigning  a  primacy  to  the  prodi- 


Religion.  113 

gious,  the  miraculous,  the  occasional,  can  not 
do  other  than  foster  incredulity.  The  religious 
life  has  a  higher  significance  than  the  ob- 
servance of  times  and  seasons,  than  the  seek- 
ing for  signs  and  wonders.  Thaumaturgy  is 
not  an  art  of  exceeding  value  from  the  New 
Testament  view-point.  Lovers  of  wonder 
find  the  four  Gospels  and  the  Acts  of  the 
Apostles,  ''stale,  flat,  and  unprofitable.^' 
What  there  is  of  miracle  in  these  writings  is 
lacking  in  spice  and  frantic  coloring.  And 
every  endeavor  which  we  make  to  interpret 
the  New  Testament  in  the  thaumaturgic 
fashion  converts  us  into  spectacles  for  angels 
and  for  men. 

Jesus  repelled  with  vehemence  the  arch- 
lover  of  the  anomalous  in  His  wilderness 
temptation.  The  challenges,  ''If  Thou  be  the 
Son  of  God,  command  that  these  stones  be 
made  bread;"  "If  Thou  be  the  Son  of  God, 
cast  Thyself  down  [from  the  pinnacle  of  the 
temple] ;  for  it  is  written.  He  shall  give  His 
angels  charge  concerning  Thee,  and  in  their 
hand^  they  shall  bear  Thee  up  lest  Thou  dash 

8 


114        Jesus  :  The  World  Teacher. 

Thy  foot  against  a  stone/*  met  with  no  ac- 
ceptance from  God  manifest  in  the  flesh. 

Certain  of  the  scribes  and  Pharisees  upon 
one  occasion  said,  *' Master,  we  would  see  a 
sign  from  Thee."  Jesus*  reply  was,  ^*An 
evil  and  adulterous  generation  seeketh  after 
a  sign."  At  another  time  the  Pharisees  de- 
manded when  the  kingdom  of  God  should 
come,  and  His  reply  was,  ^^The  kingdom  of 
God  Cometh  not  with  observation  [with  ex- 
traordinary show].  Neither  shall  they  say, 
Lo  here,  or  lo  there !  for  behold  the  kingdom 
of  God  is  within  you."  It  is  assuredly  no 
indication  of  faith,  but  rather  non-faith,  if 
our  fundamental  conception  of  God  and  His 
manifested  power  inheres  in  portents  and  de- 
partures from  the  normal.  Jesus  evidently 
meant  this  in  the  saying,  ^^An  evil  and  adul- 
terous generation  seeketh  after  a  sign." 

II. 

Jesus  gave  to  the  Divine  Causality  oper- 
ative through  law  the  place  of  primacy  in 
our  religious  life.     Our  birth  into  the  king- 


Religion.  115 

dom  of  God  He  conditioned  upon  faith  in 
the  living  God.  This  faith  involves  not 
chaos,  but  order.  It  is  man's  obedience  to 
every  law  which  underlies  our  well-being. 

These  laws  are  as  valid  and  as  ever- 
assertive  as  the  laws  of  gravity,  cohesion, 
chemical  affinity.  And  in  these  laws  God  is 
ever  present.  Man's  self-sufficiency,  his  in- 
dependence of  God's  laws,  Jesus  steadfastly 
denied.  Self-righteousness  never  failed  to 
convert  Him  into  a  diatribist. 

The  burning  speech  of  Jesus  recorded  in 
chapter  twenty-three  of  Matthew's  Gospel 
was  addressed  to  the  prototypes  of  Pelagian- 
ism. 

But  we  can  not  read  into  Jesus'  antag- 
onism of  self-sufficiency  the  negation  of  law. 
Physically  we  are  amenable  to  the  laws  of 
gravitation,  crystallization,  chemical  combi- 
nation. No  man  of  good  judgment  declares 
his  independence  of  these  laws.  In  our  sense- 
life  they  are  indispensable  coadjutors.  Men- 
tally we  are  amenable  to  the  principles  that 
underlie    our   experience    as    rational   crea- 


116         Jesus  :  The  World  Teacher. 

tures.  The  man  who  attempts  a  disregard 
of  them  we  stamp  with  imbecility. 

In  like  fashion  are  we  subject  to  the  laws 
that  underlie  our  religious  life.  Prayer, 
faith,  love,  temperance,  patience,  goodness, 
are  basic  in  the  religious  life.  Their  validity 
is  beyond  question.  They  are  as  firmly  es- 
tablished in  religious  development  as  are  the 
laws  of  gravity,  chemical  affinity,  in  our 
physical  life. 

But  all  law,  whether  physical,  mental,  or 
moral,  is  valueless  only  as  it  is  of  every-day 
expression,  of  normal  and  orderly  operation. 
The  opposition  of  the  natural  and  supernat- 
ural doubtless  arises  in  some  minds  from  the 
sense  in  which  the  term  natural  is  employed 
in  the  Pauline  writings.  This  opposition, 
however,  can  only  exist  through  our  self-im- 
posed limitation  of  the  apostle's  thought. 
Writing  to  the  Corinthian  believers,  he  de- 
clares, ^^The  natural  man  receiveth  not  the 
things  of  the  Spirit  of  God ;  for  they  are  fool- 
ishness unto  him :  neither  can  he  know  them, 
because    they    are    spiritually    discerned.'^ 


Religion.  117 

Again  he  wrote,  ''That  was  not  first  which 
is  spiritual,  but  that  which  is  natural ;  and 
afterward  that  which  is  spiritual." 

The  wisdom  of  Paul  in  affirming  that  the 
natural  man,— the  man  on  the  low  level  of 
a  universe  minus  God,  the  man  who  is  con- 
tent with  a  purely  inductive  efficiency,  who 
protests  that  the  rain-fall  and  the  snow- 
storm find  their  ultimate  cause  in  the  forces 
of  cohesion  and  cr^^stallization,— receives  not 
the  things  of  the  Spirit  of  God,  and  views 
them  only  in  the  light  of  foolishness,  is  be- 
yond question.  Such  a  man  finds  his  mental 
processes  paralleled  in  the  African  Kaffir 
who  holds  in  contempt  all  character  and  con- 
duct as  embodied  in  a  cultivated  Christian. 

The  apostle  is  also  in  perfect  coincidence 
with  the  science  of  thought  in  declaring  the 
efficiency  of  the  sensuous  nature  prior  in 
point  of  time  to  the  spiritual  nature.  The 
helpless  babe,  the  benighted  heathen,  the 
bestial  savage,  are  keenly  alive  sensuously. 
They  give  little  or  no  proof  of  the  efficiency 
of  the  spiritual  nature.    Hence  the  apostolic 


118         Jesus  :  The  World  Teacher. 

word,  that  was  not  first  which  is  spiritual, 
but  that  which  is  natural,  and  afterward  that 
which  is  spiritual,  are  words  which  become 
sound  logical  doctrine. 

In  the  larger  sense,  however— the  sense 
which  recognizes  the  natural  as  an  order  in 
which  all  law  is  regnant— the  apostle  had  an 
abounding  appreciation.  To  the  Roman  be- 
lievers he  wrote,  ^'Let  not  sin  [lawlessness] 
reign  in  your  mortal  [natural]  body;" 
^' Yield  the  members  of  your  body  as  instru- 
ments of  righteousness  unto  God/'  Let  the 
natural  order  of  your  life  be  the  agency  for 
the  outworking  of  the  Divine  thought  and 
purpose,  is  a  legitimate  paraphrase  of  the 
above  passage. 

Again,  he  recognized  the  natural  order  as 
a  medium  for  the  supernatural  in  the  words, 
''I  beseech  you  therefore,  brethren,  by  the 
mercies  of  God,  that  ye  present  your  bodies 
a  living  sacrifice,  holy,  acceptable  unto  God, 
which  is  your  reasonable  sei^ice."  The  Di- 
vineness  of  the  natural  order  of  life,  when 
informed  and  directed  by  the  Infinite  Spirit, 


Religion.  119 

is  iterated  and  reiterated  throngliout  the 
Scriptures.  Indeed,  it  can  not  be  too  fre- 
quently affirmed  that  it  is  in  the  order  of  ob- 
servable and  traceable  law  that  religion  finds 
its  highest  certitude.  God  works  through 
law,  and  not  against  it.  What  appears  to  us 
extraordinary  and  miraculous,  is  the  Infinite 
Spirit  working  through  laws  which  the  finite 
mind  can  not  grasp. 

But  the  extraordinary  and  the  miraculous 
are  figments  of  the  imagination  unless  re- 
lated to  the  moral  and  spiritual  development 
of  the  race.  And  this  relatedness  means  the 
Divineness  of  the  natural  order,  and  the  nat- 
uralness of  the  Divine  order.  Jesus  made 
the  natural  order  of  life  Divine.  He  made 
the  Divine  order  natural.  His  body  was  to 
Him  the  temple  of  the  Holy  Ghost.  His 
hands,  His  feet.  His  tongue,  were  instru- 
ments unto  righteousness.  His  ministry  of 
helpfulness  to  man  was  a  continual  presen- 
tation of  His  body  unto  God  as  a  living  sac- 
rifice. 

He    dined    at    the    table    of    Simon    the 


120        Jesus  :  The  World  Teacher. 

Pharisee,  of  Zacchens  the  publican,  and  thus 
transfigured  the  social  relations  of  men.  He 
interested  Himself  in  the  success  and  failure 
of  His  fishermen  disciples.  In  so  doing  He 
made  divinely  luminous  the  industry  of  the 
world.  He  took  the  little  children  into  His 
arms,  and,  putting  His  hands  upon  them, 
blessed  them.  In  so  doing  He  made  radiant 
with  Divinit}"  parenthood  and  childhood.  He 
made  effulgent  the  mustard-seed,  the  leaven, 
the  hidden  treasure,  the  wandering  sheep, 
the  piece  of  lost  silver,  the  net  cast  into  the 
sea,  the  gathered  fish,  through  their  symbolic 
relatedness  to  the  kingdom  of  righteousness. 

With  His  ministry  among  men,  the  living 
of  His  normal  life,  He  saw  the  imperative 
value  of  love  intensive  and  extensive  toward 
God,  of  doing  His  Father's  will  rather  than 
His  own,  of  prayerful  communion  and  fel- 
lowship with  God. 

He  thus,  in  His  own  character  and  con- 
duct, illustrated  the  coincidence  of  the  nat- 
ural with  the  Divine,  of  the  supernatural 
with  the  natural. 


( 
Religion.  121 


III. 

Jesus  as  a  religionist  gave  chief  place 
to  the  moral  and  spiritual  values  of  life. 

For  the  man  of  ceremony,  of  tradition,  of 
pretense,  of  unbelief,  He  had  no  word  of  ap- 
probation. In  His  judgment,  they  were  not 
eligible  to  citizenship  in  the  kingdom  of  God. 
^'Except  your  righteousness,''  He  said,  ^'ex- 
ceed the  righteousness  of  the  scribes  and 
Pharisees  [the  formalists  and  traditional- 
ists], ye  shall  in  no  case  enter  into  the  king- 
dom of  heaven. ' '  To  the  unbeliever  He  said, 
^'He  that  believeth  not  is  condemned  al- 
ready." To  the  pretender  He  said,  ^^If  ye 
were  blind,  ye  should  have  no  sin;  but  now 
ye  say,  We  see;  therefore  your  sin  remain- 
eth."  For  Him  there  was  an  ideal  order 
of  life,  and  this  ideal  was  surcharged  with 
ethical  and  spiritual  worth.  From  the  view- 
point of  the  Incarnate  Son  of  Grod  life  has 
utterly  no  value  exclusive  of  these  values. 

Doctrines  of  the  Divine  Immanence  are 
abroad,  which  fail  to  transcend  the  meta- 
physical order  of  the  universe.    God  is  postu- 


122         Jesus:  The  World  Teacher. 

lated  as  the  immediate  upholder  of  all  finite 
life,  but  the  ethical  and  spiritual  qualities  of 
life  are  conspicuously  absent.  The  Divine 
quality  of  man  finds  its  otherness  in  the  Di- 
vine quality  of  the  horse,  the  oriole,  the  fly. 
No  higher  or  lower  purpose  is  admissible  in 
the  Divine  Mind,  according  to  this  doctrine. 
Therefore  all  moral  distinctions  are  canceled. 
*^ Whatever  is,  is  best,"  becomes  the  accepted 
maxim.  The  libeler  as  truly  executes  the  In- 
finite Will  as  his  victim.  The  adversary  of 
all  goodness  is  as  fully  in  league  with  the 
Divine  causality  as  is  the  man  of  noble  im- 
pulses and  refined  character.  Such  an  emas- 
culated and  aimless  philosophy  of  life  found 
no  approver  in  Jesus.  Only  that  doctrine  and 
manner  of  life  which  conforms  to  a  moral 
and  spiritual  test  met  with  His  acceptance. 

God  does  uphold  all  things  by  the  word 
of  His  power,  and  in  Him  all  things  consist ; 
but  between  the  ideal  order  of  life  and  the 
actual  a  coincidence  is  frequently  absent. 
Metaphysically,  the  worker  of  iniquity  has 
his  being  through  Infinite  Power  as  truly  as 


Religion.  123 

the  worker  of  good.  God  makes  His  sun  to 
rise  on  the  evil  and  on  the  good,  and  sendeth 
His  rain  on  the  just  and  on  the  unjust ;  but, 
according  to  the  ideal  order  of  life  in  which 
moral  distinctions  abound,  God  obligates 
Himself  for  the  preservation  unto  eternal  life 
of  the  worker  of  good,  and  for  the  overthrow 
of  the  worker  of  evil.  The  moral  quality  of 
the  ideal  order  finds  a  perennial  vindication 
in  the  enthusiastic  and  willing  service,  in  the 
uprightness  of  life,  in  the  boundless  op- 
timism, in  the  dauntless  courage,  in  the  con- 
science void  of  offense,  in  the  joy,  the  peace 
of  the  lovers  of  God  and  man,  and  is  likewise 
vindicated  in  the  melancholy,  the  apathy,  the 
burdened  conscience,  the  decease  from  truth 
and  goodness  of  the  lover  of  evil. 

The  naturalism  in  which  God  is  regnant, 
and  the  supernaturalism  in  which  law  is 
regnant,  make  no  concessions  whatsoever  to 
non-ethical  living,  nor  do  they  minify  the 
twentieth  part  of  a  tithe  the  doctrine  of  retri- 
bution. Behind  natural  law  no  prodigal  can 
find  refuge,  for  God  is  in  the  law.    Behind  the 


124         Jesus  :  The  World  Teacher. 

supernatural  no  man  can  find  refuge  for  bis 
misdoings,  for  all  is  law.  '' Whatsoever  a 
man  soweth,  that  shall  he  also  reap.  For  he 
that  soweth  to  his  flesh  shall  of  the  flesh  reap 
corruption;  but  he  that  soweth  to  the  Spirit 
shall  of  the  Spirit  reap  life  everlasting,"  is 
the  protestation  of  a  true  naturalism  and  a 
true  supernatural  ism.  Nature  and  the  super- 
natural are  not  antithetical  to  each  other,  but 
are  wholly  complementary. 

The  Hebrew  prophet  spoke  with  scientific 
precision  in  the  words :  ^  ^  Thou  bast  beset  me 
behind  and  before,  and  laid  Thine  hand  upon 
me.  .  .  .  Whither  shall  I  go  from  Thy 
spirit?  or  whither  shall  I  flee  from  Thy  pres- 
ence? If  I  ascend  up  into  heaven.  Thou  art 
there ;  if  I  make  my  bed  in  hell,  behold.  Thou 
art  there.  If  I  take  the  wings  of  the  morning, 
and  dwell  in  the  uttermost  parts  of  the  sea, 
even  there  shall  Thy  hand  lead  me,  and  Thy 
right  hand  shall  hold  me.  If  I  say,  Surely  the 
darkness  shall  cover  me ;  even  the  night  shall 
be  light  about  me.  Yea,  the  darkness  hideth 
not  from  Thee;  but  the  night  shineth  as  the 


Religion.  125 

day ;  the  darkness  and  the  light  are  both  alike 
to  Thee/' 

The  besetting  God  is  the  fundamental  fact 
of  the  universe.  ^  ^  In  Him  we  live,  and  move, 
and  have  our  being. ' ' 

Law  minus  God  is  philosophic  and  reli- 
gious illiteracy.  God  minus  law  is  philosophic 
and  religious  illiteracy.  God  working  in  and 
through  all  life  gives  to  religious  experience 
a  clearly  defined  and  serviceable  content. 
This  conception  duly  magnifies  the  Divine 
causality.  It  duly  magnifies  finite  initiative 
and  responsibility.  It  arouses  the  moral 
sluggard  and  the  destructive  profligate  to  a 
sense  of  their  peril.  It  incites  the  believer, 
the  doer  of  good,  to  ever-increasing  service. 

IV. 

The  Divineness  of  nature  and  the  natural- 
ness of  the  Divine  give  to  all  experience  a 
content  that  is  at  once  inspiring  and  full  of 
comfort.  It  makes  of  God's  world  a  world 
directed  by  Infinite  Wisdom,  Power,  and 
Love.    It  gives  to  life  something  more  than  a 


126        Jesus:  The  World  Teacher. 

metaphysical  meaning.  From  this  angle  of 
vision  we  are  in  a  world  in  which  the  highest 
moral  purpose  is  being  accomplished.  No 
ponderous  juggernaut  is  crushing  to  nothing- 
ness the  bodies  and  souls  of  men.  We  have 
nothing  to  fear  if  we  are  co-working  with  the 
mighty  God,  the  Giver  of  all  good,  the  Pre- 
server of  all  flesh,  the  Father  of  all  spirits. 

The  doctrine  of  the  Divine  Immanence 
has  only  blessing  for  the  worker  of  righteous- 
ness. God  is  set  for  the  upbuilding  of  all  that 
is  praiseworthy.  He  is  set  for  the  destruc- 
tion of  all  that  is  blameworthy. 

The  religionist  relates  his  life  to  the  In- 
finite plan.  In  thought  and  in  service  he  finds 
in  God  his  consistency. 

The  line  of  separation  drawn  by  the  non- 
moral  man  between  God  and  business,  God 
and  politics,  God  and  education,  God  and  art, 
God  and  literature,  he  does  not  essay  to  draw. 
He  clearly  discerns  the  presence  of  God  in 
the  laws  which  underlie  the  flower  and  fruit- 
age of  the  earth,  the  teeming  life  of  the  sea, 
the  ebb  and  flow  of  tides,  the  physical  neces- 


Religion.  127 

sities  of  the  race,  the  economy  of  households 
and  nations,  the  beauties  and  utilities  of  all 
temporal  and  spatial  life.  He  repudiates  the 
self-sufficiency  of  law.  He  repudiates  the 
lawlessness  of  the  Divine  causality.  The  con- 
cept of  life  which  does  not  appreciate  the 
daily  round  of  activities  and  interests  as  an 
offering  unto  God  is  essentially  non-ethical. 
Jesus,  in  the  living  of  His  life,  established 
no  lines  of  cleavage  between  the  secular  and 
the  sacred.  All  life  was  for  Him  the  offering 
of  sacrifice  unto  God,  the  doing  of  the 
Father's  will,  the  upbuilding  of  the  kingdom 
of  righteousness.  He  thus  gave  to  all  thought 
and  service  a  true  unity.  He  saw  in  the 
whole  of  life  the  meaning  of  its  parts.  From 
his  view-point  commerce  is  not  a  detachment 
from  education,  nor  education  from  govern- 
ment, nor  government  from  art,  nor  were  any 
of  these  a  detachment  from  religion.  God, 
in  His  thought,  is  in  all  things  expressive  of 
law;  and  law,  in  his  thought,  is  God's  method 
of  manifestation. 

Beligion  as  one  concern  of  men,  among 


128        Jesus  :  The  World  Teacher. 

many,  is  false,  speculatively  and  practically. 
It  is  a  heathenish  notion  which  has  ingrafted 
itself  upon  quasi-religious  thought.  The 
Christian  business  man  has  the  gracious  op- 
portunity of  making  God  manifest  to  men  in 
the  market,  the  bank,  the  shop.  The  Chris- 
tian politician  has  a  similar  opportunity  in 
the  municipality,  the  State,  the  Nation. 

The  Divine  quality  of  all  natural  life,  and 
the  naturalness  of  the  Divine  causality,  give 
to  every  man  who  would  accept  it  the  office 
of  working  together  with  God  for  the  uni- 
versal inbringing  of  righteousness.  Life 
thus  informed  with  ethical  and  spiritual  pur- 
pose, makes  possible  the  bearing  of  our  bur- 
dens with  a  joy  that  no  man  can  take  from 
us,  with  a  peace  that  passeth  all  understand- 
ing, with  a  restfulness  Divinely  begotten. 

Consonant  with  our  working  out  our  sal- 
vation with  fear  and  trembling,  God  our 
Father  works  in  us  both  to  will  and  to  do 
of  His  good  pleasure.  If  the  universe  is 
God's  method  of  making  real  His  infinite 
wisdom  and  love,  then  only  that  which  fur- 


Religion.  129 

thers  the  well-being  and  felicity  of  the  worker 
of  righteousness  can  possibly  ensue.  In  all 
temporal  experience  we  may  undergo  much 
which  brings  us  grief,  disappointment,  loss, 
hardship.  But  if  our  life  is  a  commitment 
to  God,  even  these  will  work  out  for  us  a  far 
more  exceeding  and  eternal  worth  of  charac- 
ter. Manifestly  it  is  not  God's  purpose  to 
make  the  continuous  experience  of  even  a 
righteous  man  one  of  ease,  self-indulgence, 
sensuous  comforts.  E-ather  it  is  the  purpose 
of  our  Heavenly  Father  to  accomplish  in  us 
a  higher  end  than  our  finite  knowledge  yet 
has  fashioned. 

We  fill  our  span  of  twenty,  fifty,  seventy, 
eighty  years,  and  then  a  new  beginning  is 
before  us.  Time  measurements  acquaint  us 
but  fractionally  with  our  Father's  will.  Our 
duty  lies  in  the  acceptance  of  the  endowment 
which  He  gives  us  and  its  employment  in  His 
name.  The  abiding  assurance  which  brings 
good  cheer  to  the  heart  of  him  who  loves 
God  and  his  fellow-man  intensively  and  ex- 
tensively, is  that  righteousness  is  being  ac- 

9 


130        Jesus  :  The  World  Teacher. 

complisbed  in  the  working  of  all  law,  and  that 
at  God's  right  hand  only  are  there  pleasures 
for  evermore.  Jesus  gave  this  assurance  to 
His  disciples  in  the  words,  ^^Fear  not,  little 
flock,  for  it  is  your  Father's  good  pleasure  to 
give  you  the  kingdom;"  namely,  that  which 
is  real,  abiding,  and  blessed. 

Prior,  however,  to  its  possession  they 
were  to  make  all  things  subordinate  to  the 
Father's  will.  Every  fleshly  relationship- 
father,  mother,  brother,  sister,  wife,  children, 
estate— was  to  assume  secondary  rank  in 
the  execution  of  the  Infinite  purpose.  But 
this  secondary  rank  involved  a  relatedness  to 
the  kingdom  of  righteousness  which  made 
fatherhood,  motherhood,  brotherhood,  sister- 
hood, wifehood,  childhood,  and  every  conceiv- 
able chattel,  transcendently  efficient  and 
effulgent. 

Eighteousness  is  rightness,  and  Israel's 
prophet  spoke  the  mind  of  God  when  he  de- 
clared concerning  the  worker  of  rightness, 
**No  evil  shall  befall  thee."  No  time  loss 
or  grievance  has  in  it  an  element  of  endur- 


Religion.  131 

ance.  Like  morning  clouds  and  early  dews, 
they  go  away. 

It  was  this  faith  in  the  reality  of  God's 
purpose  pertinent  to  His  children  that  gave 
voice  to  Paul's  enheartening  words,  ^'We 
know  that  all  things  work  together  for  good 
to  them  that  love  God/'  The  conversion  of 
apparent  defeat  into  real  and  abiding  con- 
quest is  a  perpetual  fact  causally,  and  with 
great  frequency  circumstantially,  in  God's 
world. 

David  the  shepherd  lad  suffered  repeat- 
edly at  the  hand  of  Saul,  the  malevolent  mon- 
arch of  Israel.  To  escape  death,  he  fled 
precipitantly.  But  from  his  adversities 
issued  the  forgiving  spirit,  trust  in  God,  sym- 
pathy for  the  oppressed,  integrity  of  soul. 
This  was  causal  conquest.  Circumstantially, 
David,  as  Israel's  king,  reached  a  greater 
pinnacle  of  power  than  did  Saul,  his  perse- 
cutor. 

Daniel  cast  into  the  den  of  lions  under- 
went a  temporal  forfeiture  of  political  pres- 
tige in  the  Babylonian  Empire  through  the 


132        Jesus:  The  World  Teacher. 

sanguinary  counselors  of  King  Darius.  But 
from  this  ostensil)le  overthrow  issued  the 
sublimity  of  his  faith,  his  insurpassable  cour- 
age, his  unexcelled  manliness.  This  was 
causal  conquest.  Circumstantially,  he  also 
conquered  in  that  he  prospered  according  to 
historic  record  in  the  reign  of  Darius  and  in 
the  reign  of  Cyrus  the  Persian. 

The  Garden  of  Gethsemane,  the  hall  of 
Caiaphas,  the  judgment-seat  of  Pilate,  the 
hill  of  Calvary,  registered  manifest  reversals 
of  righteousness ;  but  from  these  seeming  re- 
pulses came  forth  in  beauty  and  in  benefi- 
cence the  Infinite  purpose.  Causally,  Jesus 
conquered  through  His  unfeigned  submission 
to  the  Father's  will,  in  His  complete  renun- 
ciation of  time  values  and  fleshly  supremacy, 
in  the  incomparable  lovableness  of  His  na- 
ture. Circumstantially,  He  shattered  the 
weapons  of  His  enemies  through  His  break- 
ing asunder  the  tomb  of  Joseph  and  His 
ascension  into  the  heavens. 

Causal  conquest  over  all  evil,  regardless 
of  its  face  or  form,  is  inevitable  if  we  are  in 


Religion.  133 

league  with  God.  If  our  faith  and  service 
are  in  love  and  truth,  the  hostile  fronts  of 
vice  can  not  withstand  our  progress,  nor 
affect  our  peace.  In  circumstance  we  may 
not  always  see  the  confusion  of  evil-doers, 
nor  have  the  experience  of  a  complete  out- 
ward vindication.  Savonarola  did  not  cir- 
cumstantially look  upon  the  mastery  of  good; 
nor  did  Hugh  Latimer  and  John  Eidley. 
Their  end  was  the  fagot  and  the  flame.  But 
that  circumstantial  triumph  shall  complete 
causal  triumph  in  the  appointed  time  and 
season  is  the  inviolate  pledge  of  God  in  law 
and  law  in  God. 

The  crux  of  the  argument  is :  Is  the  world 
of,  in,  and  through  God,  or  is  it  a  self-suffi- 
cient mechanism,  blind  and  purposeless, 
defying  every  law  of  thought,  being,  and 
morals?  The  verity  of  the  prophetic  word, 
^ '  Thou  hast  beset  me  behind  and  before,  and 
laid  Thine  hand  upon  me,"  and  the  apostolic 
word,  ''In  Him  we  live,  and  move,  and  have 
our  being,"  Jesus  the  Eeligionist  evinced  in 
His  thought,  and  word,  and  deed. 


Chapter  V. 
STRATEGY 


'*  The  Ruler  of  the  Universe  has  ordered  all  things  with 
a  view  to  the  preservation  and  perfection  of  the  whole,  and 
each  part  has  an  appointed  state  of  action  and  passion. 

*'  And  one  of  the  portions  of  the  universe  is  thine  own, 
stubborn  man,  which,  however  little,  has  the  whole  in  view ; 
and  you  do  not  seem  to  be  aware  that  this  and  every  other 
creation  is  for  the  sake  of  the  whole,  and  in  order  that  the 
life  of  the  whole  may  be  blessed  and  that  you  are  created  for 
the  sake  of  the  whole,  and  not  the  whole  for  the  sake  of 

^°"*  —PLATO. 


Christ  was  intended  to  be,  in  the  fullest  sense,  a  Savior, 
not  only  of  the  individual,  but  also  of  society,  making  the 
man  new,  but  doing  it  that  He  might  renew  mankind. 
Within  Him  were  the  energies  needed  to  create  a  perfect 
order,  a  holy  society,  a  humanity  that  should  articulate  the 
Creator's  ideal.  The  work  that  He  came  to  do  was  to  recon- 
cile man  to  God,  to  bring  alike  our  nature  as  persons  and 
the  order  in  which  we  lived  and  worked  into  harmony  with 

the  will  of  God. 

—A.  M.  FAIRBAIRN. 

ISti 


STRATEGY. 

I. 

The  strategist  is  the  man  of  generalship. 
He  has  outlook.  The  Now  is  not  the  limita- 
tion of  his  thought  and  purpose.  The  Here 
is  not  the  boundary-line  of  his  activity.  He 
thinks  in  centuries  and  millenniums  rather 
than  in  days  and  decades.  His  strides  are 
across  continents  and  hemispheres,  rather 
than  across  communities  and  common- 
wealths. He  appreciates  particulars  only  in 
the  light  of  the  universal.  The  details  have 
no  appreciable  worth  for  him  exclusive  of  the 
whole. 

Jesus  was  a  strategist  of  the  highest  or- 
der. At  every  period  of  apparent  defeat  He 
proved  Himself  to  be  the  victor.  Chicanery, 
corruption,  and  conspiracy,  begotten  under 
the  shadows  dense  of  the  midnight  hour, 
made  notorious  the  day  in  which  He  lived. 

137 


138         Jesus  :  The  World  Teacher. 

With  strict  regard  for  fact,  it  may  be  said 
that  the  age  in  which  the  Son  of  God  moved 
among  men  was  pre-eminently  the  age  of 
^ '  treasons,  stratagems,  and  spoils. ' '  The  mo- 
tions of  men's  spirits  were  as  dull  as  night, 
and  their  affections  dark  as  Erebus.  The 
unity  of  the  social  body  was  a  fiction;  the 
predominance  of  individualism  was  a  fact. 
The  Roman  Empire,  with  its  one  hundred 
and  twenty  millions  of  subjects,  was  devoid 
of  homogeneousness.  The  only  safeguard  of 
the  Caesars  against  political  disintegration 
was  the  ubiquitous  imperator,  centurion,  and 
file  of  soldiery.  Men  were  coerced  into  obedi- 
ence. The  efficienc}^  and  physical  courage  of 
the  Eoman  soldier  were  the  substrata  of  Im- 
perial Rome.  The  willing  mind  and  heart, 
the  fraternal  spirit,  the  love  of  righteous- 
ness, the  altruistic  impulse,  the  reverential 
attitude,  were  in  subservience  to  sensualism, 
and  all  mechanical  essays  of  statute  and  of 
State  to  renew  life  found  themselves  frus- 
trated, whether  in  Europe,  Asia,  or  Africa. 
The  principles  that  underlie  the  common  weal 


Strategy.  139 

were  dallied  with.  Men  saw  their  own  inter- 
ests as  paramount.  An  Ishmaelitish  spirit 
was  in  the  ascendant,  and  ostensibly  perpetu- 
ating itself  for  all  time  to  come.  Not  only 
was  the  knowledge  of  dnty  toward  God  be- 
dimmed,  but  the  knowledge  of  duty  toward 
man  was  under  a  cloud.  The  incoming  into 
the  world  of  a  true  prophet  of  God,  a  sincere 
ministrant  at  the  altar  of  humankind,  a  sov- 
ereign in  the  realm  of  thought  and  deed,  was 
the  crying  necessity  of  a  sentient,  conceiving, 
acting  world. 

An  immense  significance  attaches  itself  to 
the  apostolic  word,  ^^In  the  fullness  of  time 
God  sent  forth  His  Son.''  With  correspond- 
ence to  fact  we  may  read,  in  the  day  of  oppor- 
tunity God  sent  forth  His  Son.  The  advent 
of  Jesus  among  men  was  the  finale  of  the 
Infinite  Mind  and  Heart  in  behalf  of  human- 
kind. It  was  purity  incarnate,  love  in  flesh 
and  blood,  strength  putting  itself  forth  for 
the  renovation  of  a  degenerate  world.  It  was 
the  supreme  endeavor  to  restore  man  to  the 
splendor  and  service  of  a  son  of  God.    The 


140        Jesus:  The  World  Teacher. 

greatness  of  such  a  consummation  the  world 
has  not  yet  esteemed  at  its  just  value.  In 
our  unspeakable  obtuseness  we  are  prone, 
even  in  this  braggadocio  year  of  civilized  life, 
to  give  pre-eminence  to  the  man  who  bows 
down  to  wood  and  stone,  who  worships  the 
work  of  his  own  hands,  who  builds  the  mod- 
ern city,  the  improved  railroad,  and  the  most 
effective  machine.  Materialism,  with  the 
slime  of  the  bottomless  pit  in  its  trail,  com- 
mands too  great  a  respect  among  us.  It  is 
not  the  function  of  good  sense  to  say  that 
the  well-constructed  city,  the  railway  that 
awakens  the  sleeping  energies  of  hill,  dale, 
and  prairie,  the  steamship  that  makes  one 
the  opposing  shores  of  continents,  nor  the 
mechanical  device  that  multiplies  the  effec- 
tiveness of  the  human  body,  are  facts  of  no 
worth.  Indeed,  they  are  facts  of  extraordi- 
nary value,  but  they  are  at  no  time  to  be 
accepted  as  facts  of  fundamental  value. 

Jesus,  in  His  concept  of  life,  did  not  give 
the  premiership  to  matter,  force,  or  motion. 
He  did  not  any  time,  nor  in  any  fashion, 


Strategy.  141 

make  of  them  a  trinity  worthy  of  human 
homage.  It  is  the  man  of  circumscribed 
vision  who  affirms  the  primacy  of  the  senses. 
It  is  the  man  of  limitless  outlook  who  de- 
clares the  primacy  of  the  spirit.  The  mili- 
tary authorities  ascribe  to  the  strategist  a 
vision  that  sets  aside  all  limitary  marks.  He 
thinks  in  generals,  not  in  parts.  For  his  real 
efficiency  he  demands  a  world  in  which  to 
move.  He  is,  as  Emerson  said  of  Napoleon: 
''Put  him  in  an  island  prison,  and  let  his 
faculties  find  no  men  to  act  on,  no  Alps  to 
climb,  no  stake  to  play  for,  and  he  would 
beat  the  air  and  appear  stupid.  Transport 
him  to  large  countries,  dense  population, 
complex  interests,  and  antagonist  power,  and 
you  shall  see  that  the  man  Napoleon,  bounded 
by  such  a  profile  and  outline,  is  not  the  vir- 
tual Napoleon." 

The  strategist  refuses  to  be  insulated. 
He  is  a  universal  figure.  He  is  a  complete 
man.  The  striking  deficiency  among  men  is 
their  incompleteness.  It  is  this  which  ac- 
counts for  our  stupidity  and  our  sin.     We 


142         Jesus:  The  World  Teacher. 

a  10  prone  to  be  content  with  a  partial  expres- 
sion of  our  nature.  The  strategist,  the  man 
of  outlook,  of  universality,  of  completeness, 
of  generalship,  is  the  true  conception  of  man. 
Every  man  in  the  wholeness  of  his  nature  is 
a  strategist.  Primarily  he  is  not  what  is 
termed  in  military  parlance  a  tactician.  The 
tactician  gives  emj^hasis  to  particulars,  to 
detachments.  The  move  of  the  immediate 
present  is  with  him  all-important.  In  the 
maneuvers  and  deployment  of  platoons  and 
companies  he  is  expert.  In  the  handling  of 
regiments  and  brigades  he  is  inexpert.  His 
ability  to  govern  extends  to  district  or  muni- 
cipality, but  his  capacity  does  not  extend  to 
commonwealth  or  republic.  He  is  an  au- 
thority on  species,  but  not  on  genera.  In  the 
individual  Church  he  is  of  value.  In  the  uni- 
versal Church  he  is  of  limited  worth.  The 
tactician  is  a  partial  man.  The  strategist  is 
a  whole  man.  As  a  poet-philosopher  puts  it, 
^^Man  is  a  knot  of  roots  whose  flower  and 
fruitage  is  the  world.  All  his  faculties  refer 
to  natures  out  of  him.    All  his  faculties  pre- 


Strategy.  143 

diet  the  world  he  is  to  inhabit,  as  the  fins  of 
the  fish  foreshow  that  water  exists,  or  the 
wings  of  an  eagle  presuppose  a  medium  like 
air. ' ' 

In  our  affinities  we  recognize  no  Ultima 
Thule.  We  declare  our  kinship  to  the  plant 
world,  the  mineral  world,  the  animal  world, 
in  every  mouthful  of  food  that  we  digest  and 
assimilate.  We  affirm  our  tangency  with  all 
physical  creation  in  the  application  and  ar- 
ticulation of  our  mental  powers.  The  house 
is  the  builder  projected  in  wood  and  stone. 
The  locomotive  engine  is  the  machinist  in 
brass,  in  iron,  in  steel,  in  copper.  The  piano- 
forte is  the  man  of  melody  in  reed,  in  ivory, 
in  metal,  in  polished  wood.  ^^The  book  is 
the  life-blood  of  a  master  spirit,"  fluent  on 
page,  in  paragraph,  in  type.  The  geologist 
would  be  nonplussed  in  the  study  of  earth  and 
stone  if  the  earth  and  stone  were  not  himself 
in  other  form. 

The  beautiful  enthusiasm  that  led  Audu- 
bon into  woodland  depths  for  a  fellowship 
with  the  birds,  ^  ^  the  feathery  denizens  of  the 


144         Jesus:  The  World  Teacher. 

air,"  had  its  genesis  in  his  kinship  witli  the 
oriole,  the  thrush,  the  vireo,  tlie  che-winR, 
the  goldfinch,  the  cardinal  grosbeak.  With 
the  blithe  songsters  he  was  at  one.  They 
reproduced  the  music  and  aestheticism  of  his 
own  nature.  Agassiz  would  have  lived  in 
vain  scientifically  had  there  not  been  a  unity 
between  himself  and  the  halibut,  the  pick- 
erel, the  spider,  and  the  fly.  Strangerhood 
in  the  physical  world  is  eliminated  by  the 
mind  of  the  scientist,  else  science  would  have 
no  existence  whatsoever. 

Government  itself  would  be  as  inane  as 
the  woundless  air  if  the  qualities  of  the 
strategist  did  not  inhere  in  the  race.  The 
Greek,  the  Koman,  the  Slav,  the  Asiatic,  do 
not  in  themselves  represent  the  ideal  of  gov- 
ernment. They  are  declarative  of  the  indi- 
vidual. But  humanity,  the  common  good,  is 
the  ideal  of  all  civilized  government.  It  was 
not  the  begetting  of  a  vain  fantasy  Avhen  Ten- 
nyson wrote  of  ^  ^  The  Parliament  of  man,  the 
Federation  of  the  world. ' ' 

In  the  differentiated  life  of  a  republic,  or 


Strategy.  145 

an  empire,  the  notion  of  completeness,  of 
unity,  or  identity,  does  not  rest  in  the  city, 
the  county,  the  State,  but  in  the  nation.  The 
federal  sovereignty  is  always  the  prominent 
concept.  It  is  this  notion  that  has  made  so- 
ciety issue  from  the  clan,  the  class,  the  com- 
munity into  the  kingdom,  the  republic.  If 
the  mind  of  the  strategist,  the  universal  man, 
did  not  hold  the  place  of  primacy  in  the  poli- 
tics of  the  world,  government  as  we  now 
know  it  would  not  be.  Through  such  a  mind 
flow  the  currents  of  universal  being.  The 
complete  man  is  God^s  vicegerent  upon  the 
earth.     He  is  the  true  general. 

Jesus,  in  announcing  Himself  as  the  Son 
of  Man,  was  declaring  the  universality  of  His 
nature.  It  was  His  assurance  to  the  Jew 
that  he  was  greater  than  Abraham,  Moses, 
David,  Isaiah,  Habakkuk.  It  was  His  avowal 
to  the  Hellenic  peoples  that  He  was  infinitely 
greater  than  Homer,  Herodotus,  Pericles, 
Pythagoras,  Plato,  Socrates.  It  was  an  an- 
nouncement to  the  Roman  world  that  the 
Gracchi,   Augustus    Ca3sar,  Horace,   Cicero, 

10 


146         Jesus:  The  World  Teacher. 

13aled  before  His  effectual  fire.  All  things 
and  all  men  are  the  dowry  and  estate  of 
Jesus,  the  Son  of  God,  the  Son  of  Man. 

II. 

It  is  this  universal  quality  that  projects 
the  personality  of  Jesus  across  the  centuries 
and  millenniums.  By  the  world  of  His  day 
He  could  not  be  encompassed.  He  is  the  true 
^^ Ancient  of  Days." 

The  strategic  character  of  Jesus'  thought 
and  service  is  graphic  in  the  progressive  un- 
folding of  the  notion  of  unity  among  men. 

The  diverse  peoples  of  the  earth,  as  a 
family  identical  in  their  interests  despite  the 
endless  differentiae  of  their  activities  and 
thinking,  did  not  suggest  itself,  even  in  its 
remoteness,  to  the  great  thinkers  and  doers 
of  the  pre-Christian  periods.  Heterogeneity 
they  saw  everywhere.  They  could  not  con- 
ceive of  an  identity  asserting  itself  in  the 
divergent  intents  of  the  Greek,  the  Eoman, 
the  Asiatic,  the  African.  The  scientific 
faculty  of  classification  they  did  not  possess. 


Strategy.  147 

To  their  mind  the  leaf  was  not  declarative 
of  the  tree,  the  segment  affirmative  of  the 
sphere,  the  child  a  prophecy  of  the  man,  the 
man  a  pronnnciamento  of  the  race. 

They  did  not  think  in  universal  terms. 
Racial  prejudgments  preponderated.  To  the 
seed  of  xlbraham  the  seed  of  Aristides,  of 
Tarquin  Superbus,  of  Hasdrubal,  were  dogs. 
To  the  sons  of  Hellas  all  men,  exclusive  of 
their  own  proud  lineage,  were  barbarians. 
In  similar  fashion  thought  the  imperial  Ro- 
man of  other  men.  To  use  the  military  appel- 
lation, they  were  tacticians.  Their  concep- 
tion of  men  and  their  inter-relationship  was 
provincial.  It  was  devoid  of  outlook.  It  was 
an  absorption  in  particulars.  It  was  a  con- 
centration of  thought  on  detachments. 

Jesus  did  not  at  any  time  interpret  men 
and  measures  in  a  detached  fashion.  He 
affirmed  always  a  simplicity  underlying  dif- 
ference, a  unity  fundamental  to  all  variety. 
In  the  language  of  philosophic  sanity.  He 
declared  that  the  greatest  differentiation  was 
compatible  with  the  most  inviolate  Integra- 


148         Jesus:  The  World  Teacher. 

tion.  In  practical  speech,  the  ramification 
of  the  British  Empire,  the  American  Repub- 
lic, are  finely-spun  figments  when  dissevered 
from  a  centralized  government;  the  human 
hand,  foot,  eye,  ear,  tongue,  are  ugly  and 
useless  separate  and  apart  from  the  organ- 
ized life  of  the  body.  Jesus  thus  regarded 
humanity.  The  Jew,  the  Greek,  the  Roman, 
the  African,  the  Asiatic,  have  nothing  of 
social  value  apart  from  humankind.  They 
are  as  savorless  salt,  fit  for  nothing  but  to 
be  cast  out  and  trodden  under  foot  of  men. 

Against  all  phases  of  egoism,  of  indi- 
vidual centripetence,  Jesus  protested  with 
vehemence.  He  gave  no  aid  or  comfort  to 
Simon  the  Pharisee,  to  Herod  the  Judean 
governor,  to  the  rich  young  ruler,  or  to  the 
illegitimate  ambitions  of  James  and  John, 
the  sons  of  Zebedee.  He  declared  the  world 
to  be  a  brotherhood;  that  men  should  be 
lovers  of  men;  that  unity  of  spirit  was  the 
Divine  order. 

The  tendency  to  apotheosize  titular  king- 
ship has,  through  the  pervasive  influence  of 


Strategy.  149 

Jesus,  been  relegated  to  Limbo.  The  empha- 
sis put  upon  the  machinery  of  State  as  suffi- 
cient for  the  common  weal  has  been  largely 
nullified  through  Jesus'  appreciation  of  the 
man.  Legislation  is  the  body  of  government, 
not  its  spirit.  In  the  light  of  the  Incarnate 
Son  of  God,  the  man  must  be  in  the  body, 
the  legislator  in  the  legislation.  The  body 
politic  is  to-day  esteemed  according  to  its 
value  of  personality.  The  small  worth  that 
attaches  itself  to  Eussia,  Spain,  China,  Tur- 
key, is  because  of  their  persistent  degrada- 
tion of  the  man.  They  fatuously  interpret 
manhood  as  mechanism.  They  subordinate 
the  substance  to  the  semblance. 

Jesus  in  His  conception  of  government 
made  the  form  subservient  to  the  spirit.  The 
social  distinctions  among  men  expressed  in 
such  terms  as  Pharisee,  publican,  Sadducee, 
sinner,  aristocrat,  democrat,  patrician,  ple- 
beian, lords,  serfs,  nobles,  people,  were  not 
given  root  nor  room  in  the  thought  of  Jesus. 
The  evangelistic  record  that  the  common 
people  heard  Him  gladly  is  indicative  of  His 


150         Jesus:  The  World  Teacher. 

appreciation  of  men  as  men.  Nothing  is 
greater  than  soul,  is  the  dictmn  of  Jesus. 
And  soul  is  independent  of  class  or  clique. 

III. 

Jesus  as  the  universal  man  saw  the  sun- 
rise of  that  day  when  all  men  would  be  under 
the  conquest  of  His  spirit.  And  this  vision 
was  not  the  coinage  of  a  diseased  brain.  It 
was  sanity  in  its  final  word.  Had  Jesus  been 
a  mere  Jew,  filling  no  larger  sphere  than  was 
filled  by  Moses,  David,  Daniel,  Plato,  Epicte- 
tus,  Heraclitus,  then  His  vision  of  universal 
conquest  would  have  been  as  insubstantial 
as  the  air,  as  fleeting  as  the  dissolving  cloud. 

But  Jesus  as  the  world's  spiritual  Im- 
perator  is  beyond  the  pale  of  controversy. 
No  historian  can  give  an  adequate  interpre- 
tation to  the  spiritual  and  ethical  aspirations 
of  men  for  the  past  nineteen  centuries  with- 
out considering  Jesus  Christ  as  the  prime 
factor. 

His  spirit  has  been  mighty  in  great  crises. 
'W'hen   Charles   Martel,   in   the   eighth   cen- 


Strategy.  151 

tury,  threw  into  confusion  the  Saracenic 
hosts  that  sought  to  Moslemize  the  European 
Continent,  the  spirit  of  the  Son  of  God  was 
the  real  conqueror,  and  Charles  Martel  was 
eager  to  acknowledge  it. 

When  Oliver  Cromwell  wrested  from 
Charles  I.  civil  and  religious  liberty  for  the 
English-speaking  people  on  the  field  of 
Naseby  and  Marston  Moor,  it  was  the 
triumph  of  Jesus  Christ,  and  Cromwell  was 
keen  to  so  announce  to  all  the  world. 

When  Wellington  covered  with  the  mantle 
of  confusion  the  flower  of  the  French  army 
under  the  leadership  of  the  mighty  Napoleon, 
and  thus  saved  the  European  world  from  the 
crushing  heel  of  despotism,  it  was  the  master- 
ful hand  of  Jesus  Christ  made  manifest,  and 
no  man  was  more  willing  to  so  declare  than 
the  Iron  Duke. 

In  the  struggle  of  the  American  colonies 
for  political  freedom.  He  was  the  potent  per- 
sonality, and  in  the  issue  of  the  fratricidal 
strife  between  our  own  North  and  own  South 


152         Jesus  :  The  World  Teacher. 

no  man  of  legitimate  thinking  can  gainsay 
Ilis  overwhelming  and  gracious  presence. 

Jesus  saw  Himself  as  the  world's  con- 
queror while  he  was  yet  the  rejected  and 
despised  of  men.  The  cross,  with  its  out- 
stretched arms  of  shame,  did  not  becloud  His 
vision.  Under  its  ominous  shadow  He 
avowed,  '^And  I,  if  I  be  lifted  up  from  the 
earth,  will  draw  all  men  unto  Me.'' 

And  surely  the  auroral  flushes  of  a  per- 
ennial day  of  triumph  met  His  eye  when  He 
protested  subsequent  to  His  resurrection, 
^ '  All  power  is  given  unto  Me  in  heaven  and  in 
earth. ' '  The  world  has  not  yet  with  correct- 
ness computed  the  greatness  of  His  strength. 
The  great  body  of  men  see  in  Him  only  the 
carpenter's  son,  a  resident  of  Nazareth,  the 
brother  of  James,  Joses,  and  Mary,  an  off- 
spring from  the  loins  of  Abraham's  seed. 
As  a  world  conqueror  they  do  not  yet  behold 
Him. 

Had  Jesus  been  a  mere  tactician,  such 
words  as,  "Go  ye  therefore,  and  teach  all  na- 
tions," "Go  ye  into  all  the  world,  and  preach 


Strategy.  153 

the  gospel  to  every  creature, ' '  would  not  have 
escaped  His  lips.  He  would  have  been  con- 
tent with  a  lesser  sphere  of  action.  And  with 
this  field  of  limitation  He  would  have  taken 
His  place  among  men  as  did  Charlemagne, 
Marcus  Aurelius,  Peter  the  Great,  or  Wash- 
ington. 

But  in  the  Son  of  God  the  attentive  mind 
sees  the  arrest  and  fixation  of  the  currents  of 
Divinity.  What  is  transient  good  in  us,  is 
fixed  in  Him.  What  is  a  faint  spiritual 
glimmer  in  us,  is  exceeding  brightness  in 
Him.  What  is  prophetic  of  righteousness  in 
us,  is  fulfilhnent  in  Him.  What  is  of  moral 
and  spiritual  promise  in  us,  is  flower  and 
fruitage  in  Hmi.  He  infinitely  transcends  us, 
and  by  virtue  of  His  transcendency  He  con- 
quers us. 

IV. 

The  world-wide  evangelism  of  the  Church 
of  Jesus  Christ  is  profoundly  wise.  It  is 
not  a  chase  of  the  will-o'-the-wisp.  It  em- 
bodies the  largest  statesmanship;  it  is  the 


154        Jesus  :  The  World  Teacher. 

concretion  of  man's  highest  self;  it  is  the 
projection  of  mental  and  moral  sanity;  it  is 
the  reincarnation  of  our  ascended  Lord  and 
Master  unto  the  uttermost  parts  of  the  earth. 
To  declaim  against  this  evangelism  is  to  re- 
pudiate the  upper  ranges  of  our  nature.  It 
is  the  degradation  of  the  unitary,  abiding, 
synthetic  selfhood.  It  is  a  declination  to  com- 
plete manhood  and  womanhood.  It  is  the 
metamorphosis  of  the  man  into  the  beast.  It 
is  the  conversion  of  the  highest  possibility  of 
our  nature  into  a  base  and  groveling  actu- 
ality. 

The  kingdom  of  God  is  universal ;  likewise 
the  kingdom  of  man.  Our  knowledge  of 
numerals  came  from  our  Arabian  brothers. 
Our  knowledge  of  letters  came  from  our 
Phoenician  kinsmen.  The  Greek  gave  us  our 
art,  our  philosophy,  our  poetry.  The  Eoman 
has  put  us  in  bondage  for  our  jurisprudence. 
Our  hunger  and  thirst  after  rightness  of 
living  finds  its  incipiency  in  the  Hebrew.  In- 
deed, the  whole  realm  of  education  is  indisso- 
lubly  bound  uj)  with  all  iDeoples  of  the  earth. 


Strategy.  155 

Our  ships  sail  the  watery  expanse  to  bring  us 
fruit  from  the  tropics,  furs  from  the  arctics, 
conveniences,  comforts,  and  necessaries  from 
every  land  and  clime. 

In  like  fashion  the  mind  and  heart  must 
make  of  themselves  spiritual  benefactors 
unto  the  uttermost  parts  of  the  earth.  The 
integration  of  our  highest  consciousness  is  a 
more  imperative  duty  to  our  fellow-men  than 
the  integration  of  ourselves  expressed  in 
terms  of  culture  and  commerce. 

Jesus'  word  to  His  disciples  upon  the  eve 
of  His  ascension  into  the  heavens  was :  Com- 
plete yourselves ;  do  not  be  fractional  in  your 
thought,  will,  emotion;  be  an  integer  men- 
tally, morally,  sjDiritually ;  go  ye  into  all  the 
world,  and  preach  the  gospel  to  every  crea- 
ture ;  be  a  witness  unto  Me  unto  the  uttermost 
part  of  the  earth. 

V. 

The  strategist  is  a  man  of  method.  He  is 
not  chaotic  in  any  enterprise.  He  is  cosmic. 
In  his  mind's  eye  he  carries  the  laws  which 


156         Jesus:  The  World  Teacher. 

underlie  all  permanency  of  performance. 
The  harmony  which  to  the  inquisitive  iniucl 
of  Pythagoras  was  a  fancy,  is  to  his  mind  a 
fact.  An  orderly  revolution  he  sees  in  earth, 
in  star,  in  sun.  A  cosmic  develoi)ment  he 
sees  in  plant  and  flower.  The  ethical  energy 
of  child  and  man  he  sees  in  embryo,  and  the 
evolution  of  the  centuries  in  blessing  and 
beauty  is  to  his  methodical  mind  involution 
expressed.  Haphazard  is  not  in  his  vocabu- 
lary. A  commensurability  between  cause  and 
effect  is  existent  everywhere.  Shakespeare's 
^^Timon  of  Athens,'^  Kant's  ^^ Critique  of 
Pure  Reason,''  the  symphonies  of  Beethoven, 
the  aspirations  of  Philip  Melanchthon  as 
effects,  finds  no  common  measure,  in  his 
thinking,  with  fiery  clouds  or  ganglionic  ex- 
citations. 

Jesus  in  His  methods  was  a  strategist. 
The  activity  of  Infinite  thought  and  will  He 
constantly  affirmed.  In  His  thinking,  per- 
sonality was  primal.  Hence  in  His  work  of 
renewing  men  and  women  in  the  image  and 
likeness  of  God,  of  welding  the  human  family 


Strategy.  157 

into  a  brotherhood,  in  His  work  of  bringing 
the  world  into  subjection  to  Himself,  He 
made  the  largest  possible  use  of  finite  per- 
sonality. He  called  unto  Himself  men  who 
represented  in  themselves  powers  latent  and 
patent  alike  unto  those  possessed  by  all  men. 
Confucius,  Mohammed,  Buddha,  and  other 
great  pseudo-religionists,  did  not  establish 
between  themselves  and  their  disciples  that 
intelligence  of  relationship,  that  familiar  and 
friendly  contact,  such  as  Jesus  established 
between  Himself  and  James,  Thomas,  John, 
Simon  Peter,  Philip,  and  others  of  the  apos- 
tolic body. 

Jesus  appreciated  personality  at  its  pos- 
sible rather  than  actual  worth.  Jesus  saw  in 
His  disciples  democratic  predilections.  They 
were  men  of  the  people.  They  were  not  ex- 
clusionists.  Actually,  they  were  provincial 
Jews.  Potentially,  they  were  universal  men. 
Strategy,  generalship,  outlook,  were  latent  in 
them. 

The  wisdom  of  Jesus  in  the  call  of  these 
men  has  been  fully  attested  by  succeeeding 


158         Jesus  :  The  World  Teacher. 

generations.  Under  the  tutelage  of  their 
Lord  and  Master  they  became  cosmopolites, 
citizens  of  the  world.  The  metamorphosis 
thus  ^vrought  in  them  changed  the  aspect  of 
civilizations.  Indubitably  we  afifirm  the  vir- 
tues of  the  first  and  second  Christian  cen- 
turies to  be  the  lengthened  shadows  of  Peter, 
John,  Philip,  Paul ;  the  virtues  of  the  fourth, 
fifth,  sixth  centuries,  to  be  the  lengthened 
shadows  of  Athanasius,  Chrj^sostom,  Am- 
brose, Jerome;  the  virtues  of  the  sixteenth, 
nineteenth,  twentieth  centuries,  to  be  the  pro- 
jected personalities  of  Zwingli,  Luther,  Wes- 
ley, Knox,  Phillips  Brooks. 

The  real  efficiency  of  the  kingdom  of  God 
is  not  in  wood  and  stone  of  cathedral  and 
chapel,  in  the  multiplied  pages  of  theologic 
lore,  nor  in  liturgy  or  sacrament,  but  in  the 
personality  of  believers.  Thus  Jesus  taught, 
and  thus  He  exemplified. 

yi. 

The  strategy  of  Jesus  is  fully  demon- 
strated in  His  teaching.    Mr.  Emerson  in  his 


Strategy.  159 

'^Circles"  writes,  ^^ Beware  when  the  great 
God  lets  loose  a  thinker  upon  this  planet! 
Then  all  things  are  at  stake."  Jesus  was  not 
a  man  of  conventions.  He  pierced  to  the  core 
of  things.  To  the  plane  of  semblance  He 
brought  the  law  of  substance.  He  was  a 
categorist  of  the  highest  order.  His  thinking 
was  in  strict  parallelism  with  the  celestial 
currents  of  being.  He  saw  the  poetic  con- 
struction of  the  Avorld  of  things,  and  the  pri- 
mary relation  of  mind  to  matter.  The  de- 
votees of  Phariseeism  and  the  traditional  be- 
lievers of  all  ages  have  made  the  egregious 
blunder  of  attaching  themselves  to  symbols, 
of  declaring  the  dependence  and  stability  of 
thought  on  the  symbol.  Jesus  at  no  time  at- 
tempted the  fixation  of  these  evanescing 
images.  The  sun,  the  stars,  the  fruits  of  the 
field,  the  sacrificial  offering,  the  temple, 
frankincense,  gold  and  myrrh,  were  in  His 
thought  true  in  transition,  but  false  if  fixed. 
Ceremonial  righteousness,  if  otherwise  than 
incidental  and  fugacious,  from  His  point  of 
view  was  exceedingly  offensive. 


160        Jesus  :  The  \A/'orld  Teacher. 

Jesus  attached  Himself  to  the  moral  sen- 
timent, which  alone  recreates  the  world  in 
righteousness.  As  a  teacher,  Jesiis  did  not 
concern  Himself  piimarily  with  the  phe- 
nomena of  life.  He  enunciated  the  princi- 
ples which  underlie  phenomena.  He  gave 
to  the  world  no  dicta  concerning  gravity, 
attraction,  repulsion,  crystallization,  cohe- 
sion, organic  and  inorganic  existences, 
but  He  unceasing! 3^  affirmed  God  the  im- 
manent and  efficient  causality  of  all  phe- 
nomena. He  gave  to  the  world  no  treatise 
on  ethics,  political  economy,  sociology,  but  He 
ceaselessly  affirmed  righteousness  as  funda- 
mental in  the  highest  development  of  individ- 
ual and  social  life.  He  gave  form  to  no  sys- 
tem of  thought  which  would  eradicate  the 
prejudices  and  passions  between  Jew  and 
Gentile,  between  sovereign  and  subject  peo- 
ples, but  He  commanded  that  men  should  love 
their  neighbor  as  themselves. 

Can  we  conceive  of  fundament  a  which 
mean  more  for  the  individual  and  society 
than  God,  righteousness,  and  love?    The  phil- 


Strategy.  161 

osophic  interpretation  of  history  verifies  the 
sanity  of  the  doctrines  of  Jesus.  An  attempt 
to  build  individual  or  community  life  on 
foundations  other  than  these,  is  comparable 
to  the  building  of  a  house  upon  the  sand. 
Pelting  rains,  onrushing  floods,  cyclonic 
winds,  mean  disaster  and  death  for  such 
structures.  The  strategy  of  Jesus  is  fully 
established  in  the  announcement  of  these 
foundation  principles  of  thought  and  activity. 
A  mere  tactician,  an  incomplete  man 
would  have  been  entrapped  by  the  petty 
^prejudgments  and  antagonisms  of  that  day. 
With  the  rancor  that  swayed  the  emotions  of 
the  J  ew  toward  the  Samaritan,  or  the  adverse 
criticisms  of  Caesar's  governmental  policy, 
Jesus  did  not  intermeddle.  He  gave  no  ex- 
cathedra  utterance  concerning  the  merits  or 
demerits  of  the  Eoman  system  of  taxation. 
He  answered  in  terms  universal:  ** Render 
unto  Caesar  the  things  that  are  Caesar's,  and 
unto  God  the  things  that  are  God's."  In 
affirming  righteousness  and  love  He  spoke  the 
speech  of  all  men  under  every  possible  condi- 
11 


162         Jesus:  The  ^A^ORLD  Teacher. 

lion.  The  policy  of  imperialism  or  republi- 
canism is  not  a  vital  factor  in  the  world's 
weal,  but  the  question  of  righteousness  is. 
The  ascendency  of  aristocracy  or  democracy 
is  not  the  supreme  issue,  but  the  ascendency 
of  righteousness  is.  Whether  a  Jew  has  min- 
gled his  blood  with  the  purple  currents  of 
Gentile  life,  or  whether  he  has  not,  is  of  small 
moment.  But  whether  love  for  his  brother- 
man  is  regnant  in  his  thought  and  purpose 
is  of  vast  significance.  The  patrician  is  not 
blessed  of  God,  neither  is  the  plebeian  ac- 
cursed of  God,  because  of  their  relative  social 
positions.  The  all-absorbing  issue  is,  are 
they  workers  of  righteousness,  are  they 
lovers  of  God  and  man  in  their  respective 
spheres? 

The  debates,  endless  as  they  were  in  tedi- 
ous logomachies,  between  Pharisees  and 
Sadducees,  as  to  the  reality  or  unreality  of 
spirit,  found  in  Jesus  no  protagonist.  His 
word  was,  ^^God  is  a  Spirit,  and  they  that 
worship  Him  must  worship  Him  in  spirit  and 
in  truth." 


Strategy,  163 

According  to  this  word,  the  only  reality  is 
spirit.  Ail  else  is  but  spirit  in  manifestation. 
The  metaphysics  of  the  ancients  and  the 
moderns  that  is  worthy  of  acceptation,  roots 
and  grounds  itself  in  the  strategic  word, 
^  ^  God  is  a  Spirit,  and  they  that  worship  Him 
mnst  worship  Him  in  spirit  and  truth.'' 

Every  conceivable  contention  between 
capital  and  labor  finds  solution,  not  in  wage- 
scale,  nor  in  fiery  harangue,  nor  in  comfort- 
able housing,  nor  in  stipulated  hours  of  work, 
but  in  the  word  of  Jesus,  ^*A11  things  what- 
soever ye  would  that  men  should  do  to  you, 
do  ye  even  so  to  them. ' ' 

Jesus  sought  to  renew  the  man  in  his  in- 
tellections, volitions,  and  emotions.  Working 
thus  from  within  outward,  the  social  weal 
was  assured.  The  man  as  organized  truth, 
love,  righteousness,  reproduces  himself  in 
other  men,  and  this  is  the  only  true  and  abid- 
ing regeneration  of  society.  '*  Nature  exists 
entirely  in  leasts,"  said  Emanuel  Sweden- 
borg;  and  the  macrocosm,  said  Plato,  is 
known  by  the  microcosm.    Jesus  appreciated, 


164         Jesus  :  The  World  Teacher. 

as  is  evident  in  His  doctrine,  the  worth  of  the 
individual  man.  His  command  was,  Preach 
the  gosiDel  to  every  creature,  seek  ye  first  the 
kingdom  of  God.  In  the  publican  purified  by 
a  new  affection  He  saw  a  redeemed  humanity 
individualized.  In  the  kingdoms  of  this 
world  brought  under  subjection  to  Himself, 
He  saw  the  regenerated  outcasts  of  Israel, 
Zaccheus,  Mary  Magdalene,  Saul  of  Tarsus, 
universalized. 

Philosophy,  statecraft,  commerce,  reli- 
gion, and  every  other  phase  of  legitimate 
thought  and  service,  iterate  and  reiterate  the 
strategy  of  Jesus. 


Chapter  VI. 
CONSERVATISM. 


"  Seek  ye  first  the  kingdom  of  God  and  His  righteous- 
ness." — JESUS. 

'*  Prove  all  things  ;  hold  fast  that  which  is  good." 

—PAUL. 

"  Lo  !  before  us  gleam  truth's  camp-fires — 
We,  ourselves,  must  pilgrims  be; 
Launch  our  *  Mayflower '  and  steer  boldly 

Through  the  desperate  winter  sea; 
Nor  attempt  the  Future's  portal 
With  the  Past's  deep-rusted  key !" 

—JAMES  RUSSELL  LOWELL. 


The  thing  which  is  unjust,  which  is  not  according  to 
God's  law,  will  you,  in  a  God's  universe,  try  to  conserve 
that  ?  It  is  so  old,  say  you  ?  Yes,  and  the  hotter  haste 
ought  you  of  all  others,  my  conservative  friends,  to  be  in,  to 
let  it  grow  no  older. 

If  but  the  faintest  whisper  in  your  hearts  intimates  to  you 
that  it  is  not  fair,  hasten,  for  the  sake  of  conservatism  itself, 
to  probe  it  vigorously,  to  cast  it  forth  at  once  and  forever,  if 
guilty.  How  will  or  can  you  preserve  it,  the  thing  that  is  not 
fair  ?     Impossibility  a  thousand-fold  is  marked  on  that. 

— THOS.  CARLYLE. 
166 


CONSERVATISM. 

I. 

The  word  conservatism,  and  its  implica- 
tion for  many  members  of  the  social  body, 
is  invested  with  all  the  sacredness  that  lan- 
guage and  custom  are  able  to  bestow.  For 
another  social  class  it  is  ^'rank  and  smells  to 
heaven, ' '  and,  adopting  the  speech  of  Hamlet, 
they  exclaim,  ^ '  Fie  on  it ! "  This  variance  of 
opinion  is  chargeable  to  our  partial  interpre- 
tation of  the  word  and  that  which  it  imports. 

That  there  is  a  pseudo  conservatism  and 
a  sane  conservatism,  history  and  experience 
affirm.  It  is  not  congruous  with  wisdom  to 
repudiate  the  sane  because  of  the  pseudo. 
That  conservatism  is  legitimate  in  many 
phases  of  experience  and  thought  is  undeni- 
able. That  it  is  illegitimate  in  other  phases 
is  equally  undeniable.  The  conservatism 
which  stands  opposed  to  all  change,  giving 

167 


168         Jesus:  The  World  Teacher. 

no  valid  reason  for  its  opposition,  is  worthy 
of  universal  repudiation.  The  conservatism 
which  insists  upon  the  preservation  of  what 
is  established,  giving  a  legitimate  reason 
for  its  attitude,  is  worthy  of  all  acceptation. 
That  the  sane  conservatist  fills  a  large 
place  in  the  world's  thought  and  achievement 
can  not  be  controverted.  That  the  pseudo 
conservatist  is  a  contumacious  impediment  in 
the  path  of  the  world's  progress  can  not  be 
controverted.  Conservative  view-points  of 
the  fictitious  type  obscure  the  shining  of 
every  sun.  In  matters  religious,  political, 
commercial,  educational,  their  antagonism 
becomes  chronic.  Indeed,  with  some  fre- 
quency conservatism  has  been  confounded 
with  unqualified  contumacy.  In  the  thought 
of  some,  conservatism  and  innovation  are 
regarded  as  ceaseless  antagonists.  That  this 
is  true  as  regards  a  spurious  conservatism 
and  a  spurious  innovation  is  self-evident. 
But  it  is  not  true  as  regards  a  vital  conserva- 
tism and  a  vital  innovation.  The  conflict  be- 
tween the  Jew  and  the  Gentile,  the  Hellenic 


Conservatism.  169 

aristocrat  and  democrat,  the  Roman  patrician 
and  plebeian,  the  English  barons  and  the 
English  yeomanry,  was  not  a  conflict  between 
a  sane  conservatism  and  a  sane  innovation. 
It  was  the  blind  fury  of  lunatic  conserv- 
ators and  lunatic  innovators.  Class  conten- 
tions, whether  in  Jew,  Gentile,  patrician, 
plebeian,  aristocrat,  democrat,  baron,  yeo- 
man, wealth,  poverty,  literacy,  or  illiteracy, 
is  madness,  and  has  no  inherent  or  ac- 
quired right  to  stigmatize  conservatism  or 
innovation.  Wise  conservatism  is  the  cham- 
pion of  equality,  of  opportunity,  fraternity  of 
relation,  legitimate  liberty.  Likewise  is  a 
sane  innovation.  Therefore,  these  two  prin- 
ciples, which  are  evermore  avowing  them- 
selves in  our  thinking  and  doing,  are  in  their 
best  estate  mutually  inclusive  and  mutually 
helpful.  They  find  their  physical  parallelism 
in  the  forces  of  centripetence  and  centrifu- 
gence. 

II. 
A  pseudo  conservatism  is  the  creature  of 
fear.    It  palls  in  resolution.    The  word  ' '  sug- 


170        Jesus:  The  World  Teacher. 

gestion"  is  a  horrid  image  that  doth  unfix 
its  hair,  and  makes  its  seated  heart  knock  at 
its  ribs  against  the  use  of  nature. 

This  conservatism  pauses  on  the  last  mo- 
ment. It  has  no  salient  energy.  Its  fingers 
clutch  the  present  fact,  and  will  not  open  to 
receive  even  a  better  fact.  It  rings  the 
changes  without  ceasing  on  man's  limitations. 
It  has  no  iron  in  its  blood.  It  looks  upon  all 
newness  as  deterioration.  It  chooses  to  bear 
upon  its  shoulders  the  mountainous  load  of 
social  violence  and  vice,  rather  than  incur  the 
risk  incidental  to  all  forward  steps.  It  builds 
and  garnishes  the  tombs  of  the  prophets,  but 
has  no  attentive  ear  for  the  prophet  who  now 
is.  It  looks  with  senile  delight  upon  the  well- 
filled  barns,  but  declines  to  part  with  the 
seed-corn.  It  exults  in  the  presence  of  a 
good,  but  has  no  eye  for  an  advancing  better. 
This  conservatism  of  fear  sought  to  per- 
petuate the  fruitless  stock  of  Judaism  despite 
the  presence  of  a  virile  Christianity.  It 
quoted  the  traditions  of  the  elders  while  the 
words  of  Him  who  spake  as  never  man  spake 


Conservatism.  171 

sounded  in  their  ears.  It  was  insistent  upon 
the  perpetuity  of  the  eifete  governments  of 
the  Holy  Roman  Empire,  of  papalized 
Britain,  of  monarchized  France,  despite  the 
legitimate  cries  for  reform. 

This  conservatism  is  the  victim  of  woeful 
presentiments.  It  is  pushed  from  its  stool 
by  imaginary  ghosts,  as  was  Macbeth  by  the 
ghost  of  Banquo.  Its  vision  is  not  normal. 
It  sees  in  every  lusty  and  new-born  champion 
of  progress  an  age-long  enemy.  Its  timidity 
forbids  the  spirit  of  inquiry.  It  sees  in 
democracy  only  mobocracy.  In  the  demands 
of  capital  it  sees  only  coercion.  In  the  de- 
mands of  labor  it  sees  only  lawlessness.  In 
the  evolution  of  religious  thought  it  sees  only 
Medusa-faced  error.  In  all  newness  of 
method  it  sees  only  useless  machinery. 

A  fictitious  conservatism  is  the  creature  of 
prejudice.  It  lacks  the  judicial  temper.  Its 
judgment  is  purely  ex-parte.  Such  a  spirit 
would  speedily  bring  to  a  surcease  the  prog- 
ress of  the  race  if  perpetuated.  All  experi- 
mentation in  science,  in  government,  in  com- 


172         Jesus:  The  World  Teacher. 

merce,  education;  all  reforms,  moral  and 
spiritual,  would  come  to  a  summary  and 
sorrowful  close  if  a  prejudicial  conservatism 
met  with  widespread  acceptance. 

Conservatism  biased  lias  been  a  bane  to 
the  social  unit.  It  is  the  prolific  breeder  of 
malcontent.  The  refusal  of  Tiberius  Caesar, 
Caligula,  Nero,  to  consider  the  inalienable 
rights  of  the  people  precipitated  the  downfall 
of  the  Roman  Empire.  The  eye  of  Louis 
XVI,  blinded  by  a  prejudicial  conservatism, 
made  his  neck  a  tempting  bit  of  flesh  and 
blood  for  the  guillotine.  The  American  colo- 
nies, the  richest  possession  ever  held  by  the 
British  Empire,  were  wrested  from  the  hand 
of  George  III  because  of  his  pertinacious 
prejudgments. 

This  pseudo  conservatism  has  stood  spon- 
sor for  a  numerous  progeny  of  mis-shapen 
ecclesiasticisms,  governments,  and  social  sys- 
tems. We  should  be  devoutly  thankful  that 
its  dominance  diminishes  with  the  diffusion 
of  ethical  and  spiritual  light. 


Conservatism.  173 

III. 

A  false  conservatism  is  revertive.  Its 
spirit  finds  content  ecclesiastically  in  the 
Eomish  Church.  Every  movement  author- 
ized by  that  hierarchy  declares  its  supreme 
devotion  to  the  past.  If  Alexander  VI  and 
his  predecessors  could  be  re-established  in 
the  papal  chair,  and  their  diabolisms  perpe- 
trated throughout  the  habitable  earth,  the 
consummation  would  bring  halcyon  delight  to 
the  great  body  of  present-day  prelates  of  that 
ecclesiasticism.  Their  conception  of  the  king- 
dom of  God  is  priestly  profit,  rather  than  the 
ethical  and  spiritual  enrichment  of  the  race. 
The  peoples  of  the  globe  under  the  dominance 
of  the  Eomish  Church  confirm  this  character- 
ization. 

This  fatuous  conservatism  finds  an  ex- 
emplar politically  in  the  burnt-out  govern- 
ments of  Spain,  Austria-Hungary,  Turkey, 
Russia,  and  China.  It  is  the  past  which  they 
revere.  The  ancients  fabled  of  a  monster 
who  walked  through  the  earth  with  reverted 


174        Jesus:  The  World  Teacher. 

eyes.  He  saw  only  what  was  in  his  rear. 
These  governments  convert  that  fable  into  a 
fact. 

Commercially,  this  spurious  conservatism 
finds  a  voice  in  China,  in  India,  in  Russia,  in 
Persia,  and  other  sluggish  nations  of  the 
earth.  Vast  wealth  is  lodged  in  their  soil, 
their  waterways,  their  mountain  ranges,  in 
their  physical  energies;  but  they  see  it  not. 
What  their  fathers  thought  and  did  they  per- 
sist in  thinking  and  doing.  The  consequent  is 
a  pauperized  people.  Starvation,  with  his 
keen-edged  scythe,  mows  them  level  with  the 
earth.  In  their  distress  they  cry  unto  the 
progressive  peoples  of  the  globe  for  succor. 

In  Protestantism  this  revertive  conserva- 
tism occasionally  finds  articulation.  It  dis- 
counts every  expression,  verbal  and  practical, 
of  present-day  Christian  experience  that  dif- 
fers from  the  verbal  and  practical  expression 
of  the  past.  It  emphasizes  the  mechanical 
aspects  of  life  instead  of  the  spiritual.  In  its 
thinking  it  cancels  freedom  as  an  immanent 


Conservatism.  175 

mental  and  moral  principle,  and  therefore 
cancels  progress.  It  would  make  of  men  and 
women  automata.  It  allows  no  play  to  in- 
dividual initiative.  This  conservatism  cries 
aloud  against  all  newness  of  method.  It  is 
oblivious  of  the  world's  increasing  need.  If 
its  voice  were  authoritative,  the  far-flung  bat- 
tle-line of  the  Protestant  Church  represented 
in  missions,  in  church  extension,  in  education, 
in  humanitarianism,  in  the  religious  press, 
would  be  non-existent. 

This  conservatism,  in  its  insistence  on  the 
old  methods,  fails  to  perceive  the  necessity 
for  many  new  methods,  if  the  hearts  of  men 
are  to  be  reached  and  transformed.  The 
Church  is  not  encompassing  the  mind  of 
Jesus  Christ  when  it  fails  to  make  provision 
for  the  advancing  physical  man,  the  advanc- 
ing mental  man,  the  advancing  moral  and  re- 
ligious man.  The  gospel  of  the  Son  of  God 
involves  completeness.  A  revertive  conserv- 
atism sheds  no  luster  on  itself  when  it  does 
not  discern  this  profound  fact. 


176        Jesus:  The  World  Teacher. 

IV. 

Pseudo  conservatism  is  inert.  It  believes 
in  negation.  It  makes  no  appeal  to  Heaven's 
invisible  justice  against  earth's  visible  force. 
It  does  not  with  mailed  hand  smite  the  evils 
which  threaten  the  weal  of  humankind.  Of  the 
fierce  lightnings  of  Savonarola,  John  Knox, 
Jonathan  Edwards,  George  Whitefield,  Earl 
of  Shaftesbury,  it  knows  nothing.  Nor  does 
it  care  to  know.  It  marvels  why  Jeremiah 
declaimed  against  the  heaped-up  iniquities  of 
Israel,  or  why  Wesley  cried  aloud  and  spared 
not  the  degeneracy  of  the  English  people. 

That  a  battling  reformer  is  from  time  to 
time  a  needful  and  inevitable  phenomenon, 
an  inert  conservatism  does  not  acknowledge. 
The  French  monarchy,  in  the  last  days  of 
the  eighteenth  century,  was  the  political  in- 
carnation of  an  inert  conservatism.  It  did 
not  see,  nor  did  it  hear,  the  gathering  storm 
of  an  outraged  commonalty.  That  the 
iniquitous  accretions  of  centuries  would  ever 
be  blasted  asunder  volcanically,  Louis  XVI 
and  his  counselors  did  not  remotely  imagine. 


Conservatism.  177 

The  accumulated  doctrinal  errors  of  a 
millennium  cried  out  for  destruction  in  the 
sixteenth  century.  Inert  Eome  gave  no  heed 
to  the  clamor.  Martin  Luther  heard  the  cry. 
The  crack  of  doom  for  the  papalism  that 
inheres  in  the  Eomish  Church  was  sounded 
when  Luther  nailed  his  Theses  to  the  door 
of  the  Church  of  All  Saints  at  Wittenberg, 
October  31,  1517.  From  that  day  to  this, 
hierarchy  throughout  the  civilized  world  has 
been  rapidly  approaching  the  nadir  of  intel- 
ligent thought. 

English  Puritanism  was  the  protest  of  a 
living  conscience  against  the  sluggish  con- 
servatism which  feared  lest  God's  world 
would  fall  apart  because  a  parchment  more 
or  less  was  torn  asunder.  This  conservatism 
did  not  see  that 

"  Truth  is  Eternal,  but  her  effluence, 
With  endless  change,  is  fitted  to  the  hour ; 
Her  mirror  is  turned  forward,  to  reflect 
The  promise  of  the  future,  not  the  past." 

On  the  symbol  of  God,  not  on  God  Him- 
self,  is  the  thought  of  inert   conservatism 

12 


178         Jesus:  The  World  Teacher. 

fixated.  8uch  a  fixation  is  idolatry.  Against 
this  apathy  of  soul  Cromwell,  Pym,  Hamp- 
den, and  other  high  souls  called  to  overleap 
the  vulgar  lot  and  mold  the  world  unto  the 
scheme  of  God,  did  battle. 


V. 

A  sane  conservatism  has  placed  the  world 
under  bonds.  It  is  open-minded.  Whatever 
has  found  establishment  among  men  that  is 
worthy  of  continued  life,  it  tenaciously  holds. 
It  is  not  eager  for  change  for  change's  sake. 
But  it  is  not  averse  to  change  if  a  better  is  to 
succeed  a  good,  or  a  best  succeed  a  better. 
Its  windows  are  open  to  receive  the  bright- 
ness of  recurring  suns.  It  loves  light  rather 
than  darkness.  Stagnation  of  thought  and 
action  a  sane  conservatism  repudiates.  It  is 
ever  a  learner.  It  is  willing  to  sit  at  the  feet 
of  to-day,  if  to-day  has  a  helpful  lesson  for 
the  morrow.  The  youth  is  not  discounted  by 
this  conservatism  while  age  is  valued,  but  is 
accepted  at  his  present  and  future  values. 


Conservatism.  179 

What  may  be,  is  as  truly  in  its  thought  as 
what  is. 

Jesus  was  an  open-minded  conservatist. 
As  a  Jew  He  did  not  intrench  Himself  be- 
hind the  redoubts  of  Judaistic  thought  and 
achievement.  He  was  not  an  exclusionist. 
The  sin  of  limitation  had  no  part  nor  lot  in 
His  selfhood.  He  welcomed  each  new  day, 
and  saw  in  it  the  birth  of  a  new  world.  He 
appreciated  selfhood  as  a  great  affinity.  The 
true  man  takes  up  into  himself  all  things. 
Every  science,  every  art,  every  knowable 
thing,  he  converts  into  food  for  his  mind  and 
heart.  Jesus,  with  the  estimate  which  He 
Xjlaced  upon  man,  could  not  be  other  than 
open-minded.  The  petty  partialities  which 
found  vent  in  disingenuous  souls  could  not 
find  issuance  from  Him. 

The  two  poles  of  thought,  the  universal 
and  the  particular,  appeared  always  in  Jesus' 
statement  and  service.  He  said  or  did  noth- 
ing for  private  ends  which  was  inimical  to 
general  ends.  He  said  or  did  nothing  for 
general  ends  which  was  ultimately  subversive 


180         Jesus  :  The  World  Teacher. 

of  particular  or  private  ends.  He  saw  all  in 
one;  He  saw  one  in  all. 

As  an  open  mind,  Jesns  explored  the  cen- 
tuple, indeed  the  manifold,  meaning  of  every 
sensuous  fact.  Jewry  He  saw  as  the  world 
of  sentient,  conceiving,  achieving  peoples. 
In  the  provincialized  life  of  the  multitude 
about  Him  He  saw  the  latency  of  the  kingdom 
of  God.  Among  partial  men  He  stood  as  the 
complete  man.  For  Him  the  leaven,  the  mus- 
tard-seed, the  hidden  treasure,  the  penitent 
son,  the  found  piece  of  silver,  had  an  endless 
significance.  They  were  to  Him  symbolic  of 
truth  in  its  beauty  and  beneficence.  His 
finely  organized  nature  penetrated  into  re- 
gions where  all  was  music.  His  ear  caught 
cadences  which  have  become  the  songs  of 
regenerate  souls  under  every  sun.  His 
mind.  His  heart  were  open. 

'^A  man  is  a  method,  a  progressive  ar- 
rangement; a  selecting  principle,  gathering 
his  like  to  him  wherever  he  goes,  like  the 
loadstone  among  the  splinters  of  steel, '^  ob- 
serves Mr.  Emerson  in  his  ^  *  Spiritual  Laws. ' ' 


Conservatism.  181 

This  is  the  philosophy  of  open-mindedness. 
All  truth,  not  a  single  or  a  few  aspects  of  it, 
is  the  element  in  which  we  move.  The  disin- 
genuous mind  loses  its  balance  by  the  exag- 
geration of  a  single  topic. 

John  Calvin,  because  of  his  undue  em- 
phasis on  theological  dogma,  gave  his  consent 
to  the  execution  of  Michael  Servetus  in  1553. 
This  emphasis  was  incipient  insanity.  It  was 
a  holding  fast  to  one  thought;  a  refusal  to 
flow  with  the  course  of  nature.  The  love  of  a 
brother  man  is  of  greater  worth  in  the  light 
of  the  Incarnation  than  verbal  orthodoxy. 
But  Calvin  did  not  so  esteem  it.  Dr.  George 
P.  Fisher,  in  his  ^'History  of  the  Christian 
Church,"  states,  ^^ Calvin  believed  that  such 
an  attack  upon  the  fundamental  truths  of 
religion  as  Servetus  had  made  should  be  pun- 
ished with  death. '  ^ 

The  Evangelist  John  tells  us  of  Jesus 
healing  an  impotent  man  on  the  Sabbath-day. 
Ecclesiastical  hatred  was  incurred.  John  de- 
scribes this  malevolence  in  the  words, 
^'Therefore  the  Jews  persecuted  Jesus,  and 


182         Jesus:  The  World  Teacher. 

souglit  to  slay  Him  because  He  had  done 
these  things  on  the  Sabbath-day."  Jesus 
made  the  Sabbath-day  one  of  helpfulness  to 
man.  The  ecclesiastics  made  it  a  day  of 
abstraction;  a  period  of  barren  negation. 
Jesus'  conservatism  was  sane;  the  Jews'  was 
spurious. 

VI. 

Legitimate  conservatism  esteems  the 
solid,  columnar  body  which  gives  to  the  tree 
of  the  wood  its  power  of  resistance  and  en- 
durance. This  body  is  the  product  of  the 
years.  It  is  a  voice  out  of  the  past.  But 
legitimate  conservatism  also  sees  in  the  per- 
fected acorn  the  promise  of  other  columnar 
bodies.  Hence  it  is  progressive.  The  flow 
of  nature  arrested  means  decease.  Jesus 
taught  that  life  was  tendency;  that  all  things 
are  initial;  that  termini  are  found  nowhere. 
Eternal  life  means  life  evermore. 

This  progressive  conservatism  is  affirmed 
in  all  thought.  ^'To  make  habitually  a  new 
estimate,  that  is  elevation.''    All  else  is  deg- 


Conservatism.  183 

radation.  The  progressive  conservative  is 
a  diviner  of  tendency.  He  is  a  true  prophet. 
He  sees  the  age  that  is  to  be.  The  fortunes 
of  a  thousand  years  flow  at  his  feet.  He 
discerns  with  awe  man's  symmetry  with  all 
law.  He  is  willing  to  set  sail  on  an  unknown 
sea,  having  implicit  confidence  in  the  attrac- 
tive and  repulsive  forces  which  compel  all 
waters  to  lave  all  shores.  Static  conservatism 
converts  nature  into  an  inclosed  system.  It 
mechanically  interprets  God's  world.  In- 
finite mind  and  will  it  courteously  conducts 
to  the  front  or  rear  door  of  the  universe,  and 
bows  out.  Such  a  conception  of  things  and 
thoughts,  however,  has  no  legitimate  stand- 
ing. It  is  the  apotheosis,  as  Carlyle  puts  it, 
of  dirt.  It  finds  itself  confused  irrecover- 
ably upon  every  mention  of  miracle,  forgetful 
of  the  larger  fact  that  nature  has  no  meaning 
apart  from  mind  and  will. 

It  is  God  who  girds  the  mountains  with 
power,  who  commands  the  uprising  and 
downsetting  of  suns;  who  covers  the  valleys 
with  corn,  the  pastures  with  flocks ;  who  gives 


184        Jesus:  The  World  Teacher. 

to  all  flesh  their  meat  in  the  season;  who 
made  the  sea,  and  in  whose  hand  are  the 
deep  places  of  the  earth.  As  Professor 
Bowne,  in  his  ''Immanence  of  God,''  de- 
clares: *' Nature  conceived  as  a  barrier  to 
God,  or  as  something  with  which  God  must 
reckon,  is  a  pure  fiction,  a  jDroduct  of  unclear 
thought,  which  has  lost  itself  in  abstrac- 
tions. God  never  acts  against  nature,  be- 
cause for  Him  there  is  no  nature  to  act 
against.  His  purpose,  founded  in  His  wis- 
dom and  goodness,  is  alone  lawgiving  for  His 
action,  and  all  else,  whatever  it  may  be,  is 
but  the  expression  of  that  purpose."  And 
this  eminently  profound  and  sane  thinker  has 
the  thought  of  Jesus  as  his  basis.  ''It  is  the 
Spirit  that  quickeneth:  the  flesh  (nature) 
profiteth  nothing." 

Static  conservatism  does  not  so  interpret 
life.  Jesus  stood  as  a  bulwark  against  the 
materialistic  thought  which  would  invalidate 
the  initiative  of  the  individual,  and  the  re- 
sponsibility of  society.  He  held  in  sacred 
regard  the  attributes  of  personality.    He  did 


Conservatism.  185 

not  read  God  or  man  out  of  the  universe. 
Nature  He  saw  as  the  forthputting  of  Infinite 
Mind  and  Will.  Art  He  saw  as  God  working 
in  and  through  man  for  the  transmutation  of 
nature. 

The  premiership  of  personality  Jesus 
ceaselessly  affirmed.  Eliminate  this  premier- 
ship, and  paralysis  of  achievement  inevitably 
follows.  The  conservative  of  dynamic  quality 
gives  to  the  immanent  mental  principles, 
freedom  and  purpose,  their  proper  place  in 
all  articulate  experience.  And  with  a  due 
appreciation  of  these  mental  principles 
13rogress  must  ensue. 

According  to  Jesus'  interpretation  of  life, 
the  work  of  prophet,  priest,  philosopher, 
poet,  warrior,  keeper  of  flocks,  tiller  of  the 
earth,  father,  mother,  wife,  husband,  brother, 
sister,  no  matter  by  whom  done,  or  when, 
can  not  absolve  us  who  think  and  do  in  this 
year  of  our  Lord.  We,  too,  must  believe, 
think,  suffer,  and  serve.  We  are  the  children 
of  His  hand  and  heart;  we  are  the  sheep  of 
His  pasture.    We  are  His  vicegerents  in  all 


186        Jesus:  The  World  Teacher. 

the  earth.  The  doings  of  Israel  will  not 
answer  for  the  doings  of  the  Teutons,  the 
Slavs,  the  Anglo-Saxons,  the  Asiatics  of  to- 
day. The  melodies  which  issued  from  the 
Psalmist's  soul,  the  visions  which  filled  with 
rapture  the  Prophet  Isaiah,  the  sublime  faith 
and  heroism  which  characterized  Daniel  in 
Babylon,  the  quenchless  enthusiasm  of  Paul, 
the  charm  and  lovableness  of  the  Evangelist 
John,  must  in  some  measure  be  reproduced 
in  us.  Newness  of  life  is  the  clarion  note  of 
the  gospel  of  the  Son  of  God. 

The  God-life  within  us  must  find  in  our 
hands,  our  feet,  our  tongues,  instruments 
unto  righteousness.  Through  us  the  Divine 
purjDose  must  vocalize  and  accomplish  itself. 
In  David's  stead  we  must  declare : ' '  The  Lord 
is  my  light  and  my  salvation;  whom  shall  I 
fear?  The  Lord  is  the  strength  of  my  life; 
of  whom  shall  I  be  afraid?" 

In  Moses'  stead  we  must,  in  thunderous 
voice,  pronounce  in  the  hearing  of  all  peoples 
the  commandments  of  the  Lord  God.  As  re- 
incarnations of  Simon  Peter,  of  Paul  the 
Apostle  to  the  Gentiles,  of  Luke  the  Evangel- 


Conservatism.  187 

ist,  of  Dorcas  the  worker  of  good  works,  we 
must  establish  throughout  the  earth  the  king- 
dom of  righteousness.  Our  relation  to  God 
and  His  world  must  be  an  original  relation- 
ship. Cromwell  can  not  gird  on  the  sword 
in  our  name  for  the  preservation  and  per- 
petuation of  civil  and  religious  liberty.  Philip 
Melanchthon,  with  his  profound,  pungent, 
and  prayerful  scholarship,  can  not  in  our 
name  grapple  with  the  present-day  enemies 
of  the  faith  of  the  gospel.  Savonarola,  with 
his  sacrificial  spirit  and  leonine  courage,  can 
not  in  our  behalf  pronounce  eternal  judgment 
against  the  present-day  moral  degeneracy. 
These  duties  are  ours.  And  if  we  would  es- 
cape the  Divine  disfavor,  we  must  assume 
them.  With  the  achievements  of  days  agone, 
regardless  of  their  beauty  and  their  blessing, 
we  must  not  rest  content. 

To  be  new  men,  to  think  new  thoughts,  to 
meet  new  duties  now  and  for  evermore,  is  the 
ideal  of  Jesus.  Pseudo  conservatism  is  bane^ 
ful.  Sane  conservatism  is  the  stepping-stone 
to  better  things  and  thoughts. 


Chapter  VII, 
ETHICS. 


You  will  get  many  a  beautiful  proverb  in  Seneca ;  you 
will  get  many  a  fine  ethical  principle  in  Plato ;  you  will  find 
in  Stoicism  some  of  the  most  exalted  precepts  that  human 
ethics  have  ever  known.  But  mark  you  one  thing :  You  will 
never  discover  that  these  elevated  the  common  life  of  man, 
affected  the  course  of  lust,  made  the  bad  good,  or  the  impure 
holy. 

Where  they  failed,  Christ  succeeded  with  splendid,  glori- 
ous success ;  He  made  out  of  the  very  outcasts  men  that  be- 
came saints  to  God. 

—A.  M.  FAIRBAIRN. 
190 


ETHICS. 

I. 

Much  of  the  ethical  contention  that  has 
greeted  the  ear  of  men  has  been  on  the  as- 
sumption that  life  is  a  series  of  abstractions, 
and  that  men  and  women  are  hypothetical, 
rather  than  creatures  of  flesh  and  blood. 

The  moral  life  of  the  race  did  not  have 
its  genesis  in  the  general  principles  of  con- 
duct, but  by  forming  codes  of  concrete  duties. 
What  we  owe  to  our  parents,  our  children, 
our  neighbors,  our  fellow-countrymen,  the 
world,  is  the  concrete  form  in  which  the 
ethical  nature  declares  itself. 

A  striking  analogy  between  the  mental 
and  moral  nature  is  evident.  Abstract  specu- 
lative principles  do  not  mark  the  initiation 
of  the  mental  life.  The  child,  the  savage,  the 
illiterate,  know  nothing  of  the  framework  of 
reason,  the  regulative  ideas  of  the  thought- 

191 


192         Jesus  :  The  World  Teacher. 

life.  Their  mental  unfolding  is  through  the 
medium  of  specific  acts  of  knowing.  The 
child  is  alert  over  the  colored  ball  as  such. 
He  is  not  interested  in  the  chemical  combina- 
tion which  makes  the  ball  possible;  neither 
is  he  enthusiastic  over  the  law  of  gravity 
which  enables  him  to  hold  the  ball  in  his 
hand.  The  savage  is  nimble  in  his  pursuit  of 
the  game  of  the  forest,  but  the  sciences  of 
zoology,  biology,  anatomy,  and  the  classifica- 
tion of  the  beasts  and  birds,  do  not  stir  his 
embryonic  mentality. 

The  illiterate  man  has  his  existence  within 
the  proximate  range  of  the  alphabet  or  Ara- 
bic numerals.  The  realms  of  speculation  in- 
habited by  Democritus  and  John  Locke  have 
no  significance  for  his  latent  powers.  But 
as  the  mind  grows  through  specific  acts  of 
knowing,  a  search  for  principles  is  begun 
whereby  the  colored  ball,  the  beasts  and 
birds,  the  alphabet,  the  numerals,  may  be 
understood  in  all  their  relatedness.  This  is 
the  significance  of  education.  The  thought 
jjrinciples  which  are  utilized  by  the  mature 


Ethics.  193 

mind  are  implicit  in  the  child  mind.  The 
high  civilization  is  latent  in  the  savage  mind, 
and  the  realms  of  speculative  and  scientific 
thought  are  implicit  in  the  mind  of  the  illiter- 
ate. The  implicit  becoming  explicit,  the 
latent  becoming  efficient,  the  possible  emerg- 
ing into  the  actual,  is  what  we  call  mental  and 
moral  progress. 

The  sensational  school  of  philosophy  has 
sought  to  deduce  our  rational  ideas  and  facul- 
ties from  sensation  and  the  sensibility.  This 
thesis  would  make  all  mind  a  child  mind.  It 
gives  distinction  to  the  savage  and  the  illiter- 
ate, and  utterly  ignores  the  higher  forms  of 
intelligence.  It  makes  the  lower  explain  the 
higher,  the  child  explain  the  sage.  It  is  not 
denied  that  the  mind  is  objective  in  its  first 
activities,  and  becomes  reflective  at  a  later 
date.  A  six-year-old  lad  with  the  thought 
capacities  of  Louis  Agassiz  or  John  Marshall 
would  be  monstrous. 

But  the  human  mind  does  not  rest  in  im- 
pressions of  the  sensibility.  It  works  them 
over  into  forms  inherent  in  its  own  nature, 

13 


194        Jesus:  The  World  Teacher. 

In  so  doing  it  transcends  the  sense  fact  en- 
tirely. If  a  prankish  boy  pricks  me  with  a 
pin,  my  sensations  are  tactual  and  painful. 
This  summarizes  ray  sensation.  But  when  I 
protest  against  being  pricked  with  a  pin  I 
transcend  the  sense  fact.  I  attribute  to  the 
pin  an  objectivity  and  an  efficiency  that 
causes  me  certain  sensations  and  certain 
aspects  of  mind.  In  all  this  experience  the 
abiding,  thinking,  self-determining,  conscious 
ego  plays  the  major  role.  The  receptivity 
of  the  senses  is  an  accepted  fact,  but  their 
primacy  is  repudiated. 

Sense  life  means  nothing  for  us  only  as 
the  mind  works  over  all  sense  data  into 
rational  forms.  If  the  contention  of  the  sen- 
sational philosopher  is  valid,  then  the  moral 
life  is  nothing  more  than  a  series  of  nervous 
excitations,  a  congeries  of  sights,  sounds, 
tastes,  smells,  touches.  If  sensation  is  pri- 
mary, then,  as  John  Locke  affirmed,  the  mind 
is  a  tabula  rasa.  It  possesses  no  initiative. 
It  is  not  conscious,  it  is  not  unitary.  This 
thesis  makes  of  all  implicit  mental  and  moral 


Ethics.  195 

principle  a  figment  of  the  imagination.  The 
man  is  not  a  personality,  but  a  psychical 
mechanism.  The  call  and  the  place  for  a 
free,  intelligent,  constitntive  selfhood  is  pith- 
less and  pointless.  Moral  skepticism  finds 
its  birth  and  perpetuity  in  the  school  of  sen- 
sational thought.    No  other  issue  is  possible. 

If  the  object  is  the  determinant  of  all 
thought,  then  the  moral  life  consists  pri- 
marily of  physical  desires  and  of  the  lower 
egoistic  sentiments.  The  elimination  of  moral 
ideals,  of  implicit  moral  tendencies,  of  the 
power  of  reflective  thought,  can  have  but  one 
ultimate,  namely,  a  baseness  of  desire  and  a 
vicious  practice.  If  the  puerilities  of  child- 
hood, the  crudities  of  the  savage,  the  stupid- 
ities of  the  illiterate,  are  the  sum  and  sub- 
stance of  the  race,  then  all  work  of  education, 
mentally  and  morally,  is  wholly  gratuitous. 

The  doctrine  of  evolution  as  taught  by  Mr. 
Plerbert  Spencer  and  his  ardent  disciples  is 
an  attempt  to  reinforce  the  sensational  philos- 
ophy. Man,  affirms  Mr.  Spencer,  is  the  emer- 
gence from  the  brute,  and  in  his  upper  ranges 


196         Jesus:  The  World  Teacher. 

is  nothing  more  than  the  brute  condition  ad- 
vanced. How  John  Milton,  Philip  Melanch- 
thon,  Edmund  Burke,  as  essentially  and  only 
brutes,  become  anything  else,  or  how  the 
brute  which  transcended  himself  remained 
the  identical  brute,  the  Spencerian  evolution- 
ist does  not  tell  us. 

That  which  comes  out  must  have  been 
within.  The  actual  is  implicit  in  the  poten- 
tial, and  the  potential  is  explicit  in  the  actual. 
The  boy  is  the  embryonic  man.  The  refine- 
ments of  civilized  life  are  inherent  in  the 
destructive  Goths  and  Vandals,  and  the  sci- 
entific mind  of  the  electrician  was  implicit  in 
Thomas  Edison,  the  rustic  and  unsuspecting 
youth. 

If  our  mental  and  moral  natures  are  noth- 
ing more  than  the  product  of  the  senses,  the 
unfolding  of  the  brute  and  the  brute  only, 
then  the  science  of  ethics  is  a  verbal  manipu- 
lation. If  this  thesis  is  valid,  then  men  are 
automata,  and  nothing  more.  They  do  not 
initiate,  they  are  initiated.  What  of  mind 
and  conscience  we  have  are  but  the  accom- 


Ethics.  197 

paniments  of  the  movements  and  interactions 
of  the  material  world.  Spirit  is  subordinated 
to  matter.  As  Professor  Huxley,  the  enthu- 
siastic champion  of  conscious  automatism, 
puts  it,  ^^The  extension  of  the  province  of 
what  we  call  matter  and  causation  has  had 
as  its  concomitant  the  banishment  of  what  we 
are  pleased  to  term  spirit  and  spontaneity 
from  all  regions  of  human  thought."  If  the 
primacy  of  the  senses  and  the  brute  are  be- 
yond all  disputation,  then  the  conduct  of  an 
Asiatic  typhoon  has  just  as  much  moral 
validity  in  it  as  the  conduct  of  men  and 
women. 

But  the  theses  of  the  sense  philosopher,  of 
the  Spencerian  evolutionist,  are  excursions 
into  the  realm  of  the  hypothetical.  Actual 
men  and  women,  struggling  civilizations,  or- 
ganized community  and  governmental  life, 
the  conscious  recognition  of  moral  ideals  both 
in  ourselves  and  others,  without  which  moral 
responsibility  is  a  fiction,  unite  in  a  repudia- 
tion of  all  thought  that  disregards  the  imma- 


198        Jesus  :  The  World  Teacher. 

nent  mental  and  moral  principles  which  un- 
derlie all  articulate  and  practical  experience. 

II. 

The  ethicist  who  thinks  legitimately  has 
a  keen  appreciation  of  the  practical  phase  of 
life,  but  he  is  not  unmindful  of  the  immanent 
principles  which  make  the  practical  life  a 
fact.  The  sciences  of  geometry,  of  mechanics, 
of  chemistry,  of  physics,  are  the  corner- 
stones of  the  skyscraper,  the  modern  city. 
The  locomotive,  the  plow-point,  the  tele- 
phone, the  steamship,  have  no  significance 
apart  from  these  sciences.  Mind  is  funda- 
mental. In  like  manner  moral  insight  is  pri- 
mary in  the  development  of  individual  char- 
acter, in  the  formation  and  perpetuity  of  gov- 
ernment, and  in  the  diverse  ramifications  of 
social  life.  As  a  study,  ethics  has  been  vari- 
ously pursued.  Some  have  given  their 
thought  to  the  history  of  the  genesis  and 
emergence  of  the  ethical  idea.  In  so  doing 
they  have  sought  to  affirm  its  validity.  But 
it  is  not  strikingly  wise  to  attach  a  thought 


Ethics.  199 

value  to  chemistry  because  of  its  emergence 
from  alchemy,  nor  to  affix  a  logical  validity 
to  the  British  Empire  because  of  its  begin- 
ning in  the  barbarisms  of  the  Jutes  and 
Angles. 

Chemistry  and  empires  have  their  value 
independent  of  superstition  and  primeval 
savagery.  The  worth  and  validity  of  moral 
ideas  can  not  be  determined  by  their  geneses 
and  emergences.  The  psychological  study 
of  the  faculties  concerned  in  the  production 
of  moral  ideas— namely,  conscience,  will,  rea- 
son, sensibility— has  engaged  the  thought  of 
some  moralists.  But  such  study  is  of  the 
negative  character,  and  usually  serves  as  an 
apologist  for  moral  skepticism  or  vice.  The 
ethical  study  that  has  a  theoretical  and  prac- 
tical value  is  the  study  of  moral  ideas,  their 
postulates,  implications,  and  application. 

It  is  not  affirmed  for  one  moment  that  all 
difficulties  vanish  when  the  relation  of  the 
individual  man  to  the  ideal  of  conduct  and 
the  ways  and  means  of  bringing  men  into 
harmony  with  the  ideal  are  clearly  stated. 


200        Jesus:  The  World  Teacher. 

The  obstacles  in  human  nature  to  the  realiza- 
tion of  the  moral  ideal  are  oftentimes  ap- 
parently insuperable.  Despite  the  unfolding 
of  the  highest  ideals  of  character  and  con- 
duct, men  are  practically  indifferent  to  them. 
This  difficulty  and  indifferentism  invariably 
lead  to  a  consideration  of  moral  and  spiritual 
dynamics.  And  this  consideration  involves 
primarily  the  doctrine  and  life  of  the  Chris- 
tian religion.  Of  this  we  shall  speak  later. 
The  indeterminateness  of  the  moral  prob- 
lem confronts  every  thinker.  Ipsedixitisni 
can  not  solve  the  individual  puzzles,  nor  cut 
the  knot  of  social  complication.  In  ethical 
affirmation  a  wide  divergence  is  seen  between 
Aristippus  and  Plato,  between  Epicurus  and 
James  Martineau.  Human  nature  is  end- 
lessly differentiated  in  its  activities  and 
manifold  in  its  sources.  But  every  moral  life 
has  two  general  aims:  individual  worth  and 
peace,  a  social  happiness  and  fortune.  The 
former  aim  has  its  dependence  upon  the  at- 
titude of  our  will  toward  our  ideal  of  life  and 
action.     A   hopeless    pandemonium   asserts 


Ethics.  201 

itself  in  every  man  who  does  not  enthusias- 
tically will  the  highest  possible  worth  and 
the  profoundest  peace  as  his  inner  posses- 
sions. 

The  second  aim  depends  for  its  consum- 
mation upon  our  individual  compliance  with 
laws  psychological,  political,  social,  ethical, 
and  physical.  All  the  prowess  of  thought, 
will,  and  emotion  are  called  into  requisition 
if  these  two  general  aims  of  life  are  to  find 
even  a  partial  realization.  No  ethical  system 
is  complete  which  does  not  evoke  the  capacity 
of  the  whole  man,  and  which  does  not  invite 
every  man  into  every  sphere  of  thought  and 
activity. 

Systems  of  prudence  which  look  to  ex- 
ternal fortune  and  happiness,  and  disregard 
moral  insight,  and  systems  of  abstraction 
which  seek  for  inner  worth  and  peace  and 
ignore  external  fortune  and  happiness,  are 
incomplete  views  of  life,  and  fail  to  effect 
even  a  remote  solution  of  the  ethical  problem. 

The  complete  man  individually,  the  com- 
plete man  socially,  is  the  only  ethical  aim 


202         Jesus:  The  World  Teacher. 

which  elicits  our  cordial  acceptance,  because 
it  is  the  only  ethical  aim  which  comprehends 
life. 

ni. 

Ethical  philosophy  finds  its  range  in  two 
grand  divisions.  One  division  seeks  to  found 
the  notion  of  duty  in  some  form  of  acquirable 
good.  The  other  seeks  to  make  duty  an  ab- 
solute, self-sufficing  imperative.  This  second 
division  affirms  that  if  duty  is  deduced  from 
anything,  it  must  be  from  the  nature  of  the 
moral  subject,  and  not  from  any  evolution  of 
external  ends. 

To  us  it  is  self-evident  that  these  two 
great  divisions  mutually  imply  each  other,  if 
the  full  moral  consciousness  of  mankind  is 
anything  more  than  a  verbal  abstraction. 
Much  of  profound  and  luminous  truth  is 
found  in  each  of  these  ethical  divisions,  but 
it  is  truth  of  the  semi  order.  The  ethical 
thought  which  gives  primacy  to  the  notion  of 
duty  in  external  good  is  designated  in  modern 
speech  as  the  doctrine  of  utility.     It  is  the 


Ethics.  203 

legitimate  offspring  of  Hedonism  and  Epicu- 
reanism. 

The  division  which  makes  duty  an 
absolute,  self- sufficing  imperative,  modem 
thought  designates  the  doctrine  of  the  in- 
tuitions. It  is  traceable  to  the  refined  ab- 
stractions of  Socrates  and  the  Platonic 
school. 

The  doctrine  of  utility  or  goods  ethics 
decries  action  for  form's  sake.  And  this  de- 
crial gives  to  the  doctrine  a  far-reaching 
value.  All  action  which  ends  in  itself  and 
leaves  things  where  they  were  before  is 
irrational  and  inane.  No  one  of  us  can  ignore 
the  postulate  that  moral  action  must  be 
rational  action,  and  rational  action  must  have 
an  end  beyond  itself.  And  to  be  rationally 
obligatory,  every  end  must  be  a  good  of  some 
sort.  No  man  for  the  sake  of  activity  is  war- 
ranted in  doing  mischief;  neither  is  his  ac- 
tivity rational  and  moral  if  it  is  an  indifferent 
activity.  Hence,  we  repeat,  the  ground  of 
obligation  to  action  perforce  lies  in  some 
good  to  which  the  action  is  directed.     The 


204        Jesus  :  The  World  Teacher. 

evolution  of  family,  coiiini unity,  national  arid 
international  life,  has  come  to  its  present 
good  fortune  through  the  rational  and  moral 
seeking  of  the  good. 

Our  adaptation  to  the  world  about  us 
makes  imperative  the  rejection  of  the  notion 
that  external  goods  and  fortune  have  no  part 
in  our  lives.  Utility  is,  beyond  peradventure, 
a  great  fact  in  the  living  of  a  normal  life. 
If  ethics  are  to  be  rationalized  we  can  not  rest 
in  a  mere  law.  We  must  have  an  open  eye 
for  ends.  The  constitution  of  human  nature 
makes  certain  goods  possible  and  desirable, 
and  laws  are  Divinely  ordained  by  the  ob- 
servance of  which  these  goods  may  be  pos- 
sessed. If  duty  has  anything  of  practical 
worth  in  it,  then  it  is  patent  that  our  duty 
lies  within  the  range  of  these  goods  and  laws. 
Even  though  the  goods  may  not  be  reached 
by  us,  nevertheless  ethics  demands  that  we 
put  ourselves  in  co-operation  with  all  law 
which  underlies  a  practical  good.  The  man 
of  hereditary  j)hysical  weakness  is  not  moral 
if  he  does  not  studiously  regard  the  laws 


Ethics.  205 

which  underlie  health.  He  may  never  become 
a  vigorous  man,  nevertheless  he  is  obligated 
to  live  in  co-operation  with  all  hygienic  law. 
The  muddy-m.ettled  mechanic  may  never  be- 
come a  master  workman,  yet  he  is  obligated 
to  exert  every  energy  of  body  and  mind  in 
co-operation  with  all  law  which  underlies  the 
highest  mechanical  proficiency. 

The  commonwealths  of  these  United 
States  are  obligated  to  enact  and  enforce 
every  law  which  has  for  its  end  the  well-being 
of  their  respective  citizenship,  even  though  a 
moral  millennium  is  not  ushered  in  with  the 
rising  of  each  sun.  Morals  and  reason  de- 
mand that  we  have  as  an  end  in  life  a  normal 
good.  This  good  may  be,  from  our  present 
outlook,  what  Mr.  Emerson  in  his  essay  on 
^^ Circles"  terms  the  ^^ Flying  Perfect,''  but 
our  morality  is  conditioned  on  the  pursuit 
of  it. 

IV. 

The  doctrine  of  the  good  has  not  always 
cherished  ideals  that  were  inspirational  in 
their  nature.    Indeed,  such  unsavory  philo- 


206        Jesus  :  The  W^orld  Teacher. 

sophic  companionship  has  characterized  it  in 
modern  times,  and  such  low  conceptions  of 
the  good  soiled  its  escutcheon  in  ancient 
times,  that  its  character  is  greatly  discounted 
by  all  impartial  judgment.  If  a  tree  is  known 
by  its  fruit,  then  the  utility  doctrine  is,  theo- 
retically and  practically,  *^a  goodly  apple 
with  a  rotten  heart. ' ' 

Philosophic  history  introduces  us  to  the 
champions  of  the  good  in  the  person  of  Aris- 
tippus  of  Cyrene,  who  declared  that  the  in- 
tense pleasures  of  the  body  were  the  pri- 
mary good;  but  since  it  is  wisdom  to  avoid 
I^ain  as  well  as  win  pleasure,  the  life  of 
purely  sensuous  enjoyment  needs  to  be  mod- 
erated and  checked  in  some  degi'ee  in  favor 
of  the  less  intense  but  safer  mental  joys. 
The  prestige  here  given  by  Aristippus  to  the 
mind  is  conditioned  on  prudential  grounds, 
and  nothing  more.  It  is  the  penalty  attached 
to  physical  indulgence  which  persuades  one 
to  give  any  value  to  the  joys  of  mind.  Aris- 
tippus in  this  postulate  gives  to  the  doctrine 
of  Hedonism  its  most  consistent  and  forcible 


Ethics.  207 

expression.  And  Hedonism  historically  is  in- 
dividualism without  admixture.  No  obliga- 
tion to  society  or  State  is  recognized.  The 
pleasure  to  be  sought  is  the  pleasure  of  the 
individual  man. 

Society  hedonistically  is  a  segregation; 
a  bundle  of  individual  units. 

Theodorus,  an  ardent  Hedonist,  protested 
that  it  was  ^^not  reasonable  for  a  wise  man 
to  hazard  himself  for  his  country  and  en- 
danger wisdom  for  a  set  of  fools." 

Directly  or  indirectly,  Cynicism,  Stoicism, 
and  Epicureanism  issued  from  Hedonistic 
loins. 

Antisthenes  the  Cynic  declared  that  the 
only  rational  and  virtuous  life  is  the  life  of 
fewest  wants. 

And  this  fewness  of  wants,  in  the  Cynic's 
mind,  involved  the  severance  of  all  ties  that 
related  a  man  to  the  remainder  of  the  world. 
Every  national  and  civic  bond  is  broken  on 
the  mistaken  ground  that  the  State  and  com- 
munity must  be  repudiated  if  a  man  would 
be  a  cosmopolitan,  a  world-citizen. 


208        Jesus  :  The  World  Teacher. 

Diogenes,  wandering  through  the  Greek 
provinces  with  no  other  shelter  than  a  tub, 
and  holding  in  contempt  all  the  refinements 
of  civilization,  is  a  typical  world-citizen  from 
the  Cynic's  standpoint.  The  Greek  Sophist 
intrepreted  life  ethically  as  the  ascendency 
of  private  and  personal  interests.  The  Stoic 
philosophy  produced  a  tj^pe  of  robust  souls 
superior  in  many  respects  to  anything  in  the 
way  of  ethical  character  in  the  ancient  world. 
The  flaw,  however,  in  the  philosophy  of  Zeno, 
the  founder  of  Stoicism,  was  his  denial  of  the 
legitimacy  of  the  emotions.  Aristotle  im- 
bibed so  completely  the  ethics  of  Zeno  that  he 
declared,  ^'The  emotions  are  not  something 
to  be  simply  regulated  and  held  in  check  by 
reason ;  they  must  be  destroyed  utterly ;  as  a 
disease,  emotion  is  not  to  be  tolerated  for  a 
moment. ' ' 

An  inhumanity  stamped  the  Stoical  notion 
of  life.  ^^At  its  best,''  remarks  Professor 
Arthur  Kenyon  Eogers,  ^  ^  Stoicism  was  a  re- 
spect for  one's  self  and  one's  own  integrity. 
At  its  worst,  it  was  a  Pharisaic  pride  in  one's 


Ethics.  209 

individual  achievements  and  a  contemptuous 
disregard  for  the  mentally  and  morally  in- 
firm. Its  self-centeredness,  its  apathy  toward 
all  pain  or  pleasure,  rendered  it  useless  as  a 
regenerator  of  society." 

Epicurus  found  in  pleasure  the  one  ob- 
vious and  undeniable  good.  And  in  his 
thought,  pleasure  had  as  its  definite  content 
bodily  enjoyment.  ^'No  conception,"  says 
Epicurus,  ^^of  the  good  is  possible  apart 
from  physical  pleasure. ' '  Metrodorus,  a  fol- 
lower of  Epicurus,  had  the  temerity  to  say 
that  everything  good  had  reference  to  the 
stomach. 

These  variant  views  of  the  good,  of  the 
pleasurable  life,  of  ethical  character  and  con- 
duct, are  the  early  forerunners  of  the  modern 
doctrine  of  utility.  It  is  apparent  that  the 
normal  good  was  not  comprehended  by  the 
Hedonist,  the  Sophist,  the  Cynic,  the  Stoic, 
or  the  Epicurean. 

And  neither  is  life  in  the  sense  of  com- 
pleteness interpreted  by  the  modern  utilita- 
rian.   The  unchastened  egoism  of  Aristippus 

14 


210         Jesus  :  The  World  Teacher. 

and  Epicurus  finds  itself  iiropagated  in  the 
ethical  thought  of  Jeremy  Bentham,  John 
Stuart  Mill,  and  Herbert  Spencer.  Bentham 
declared  with  gusto :  ' '  I  have  accepted  as  my 
guide  the  principle  of  interest,  and  I  will  fol- 
low it  wherever  it  may  lead  me.  When  the 
moralist  speaks  of  duty,  every  one  thinks  of 
his  own  interest.  Virtue  is  a  skillful  econo- 
mist who  serves  his  own  interests.*' 

Mr.  Spencer,  in  his  ''Data  of  Ethics,'' 
declares  substantially  the  premiership  of  in- 
dividual pleasure. 

John  Stuart  Mill  in  his  ethical  thought 
found  an  ultimate  in  the  subordination  of 
physical  happiness  to  the  refinements  of  the 
mind.  The  utility  doctrine  never  fails,  even 
when  most  luminously  stated,  to  reveal  the 
Hedonistic  rock  out  of  which  it  is  hewn  and 
the  Epicurean  hole  whence  it  was  digged. 
5'rom  its  loins  have  sprung  no  virile  reforms. 
The  Hedonist,  the  Epicurean,  the  Utilitarian, 
are  almost  invariably  ethical  molluscans. 
They  have  not  stood,  and  do  not  stand,  upon 
their  feet  and  challenge  the  corruptions  of 


Ethics.  211 

the  social  body.  They  have  been  willing  for 
the  world  to  jog  along  at  any  pace  which  it 
chose.  The  beneficient  work  of  municipal  and 
national  reform,  of  public  education,  of  spir- 
itual enlightenment  it  has  not  accelerated. 

The  reason  is  palpable:  As  a  doctrine  it 
has  assiduously  disregarded  the  self-con- 
scious, reflective,  self-determining  nature  of 
the  individual.  It  has  emphasized  unceas- 
ingly the  primacy  of  sensuous  experience,  the 
association  of  ideas  gathered  from  the  expe- 
rience of  the  race,  the  parallelism  of  mind 
and  matter,  the  spiritual  life  admitting  of 
explanation  in  terms  of  the  physical  catego- 
ries. The  phenomena  of  chemical  affinity,  of 
gravity,  of  conserved  energy,  of  all  quantita- 
tive sciences,  it  accepts  as  fundamental  phe- 
nomena. The  phenomena  of  personality  and 
the  multifarious  interrelationship  of  person- 
ality with  the  visible  and  invisible  worlds,  are 
ignored  by  the  egoistic  and  utility  propagan- 
dists. Based  on  this  logical  and  epistemo- 
logical  falsism,  the  construction  of  a  complete 
ethical  system  is  beyond  the  possible. 


212         Jesus:  The  World  Teacher. 

V. 

The  notion  of  duty  separate  and  distinct 
from  all  outer  good  and  fortune  has  had  its 
champions  from  the  beginning  of  ethical 
statement  to  the  present. 

Socrates  may  be  considered  the  founder 
of  this  school  of  thought,  the  intuitional 
school.  He  esteemed  duty  as  basal.  The 
fundamental  nature  of  moral  insight  he  em- 
phasized. But  a  clearly  defined  content  in 
his  notion  of  the  true  end  of  life  was  lacking. 
Virtue  or  duty,  he  affirmed,  is  the  highest 
good,  and  virtue  or  duty  is  intimately  bound 
up  with  the  possession  of  knowledge  or  in- 
sight. But  what  virtue  or  insight  is  good  for, 
he  does  not  tell  us.  His  reasoning,  remarks 
Professor  Arthur  Kenyon  Rogers,  was  cir- 
cular. He  reached  no  ultimate.  This  over- 
sight is  largely  characteristic  of  the  duty 
ethicists. 

Every  essay  to  make  of  good- will  an  end 
in  itself,  to  affirm  formal  rightness  as  all- 
sufficient,  has  ultimated  in  ethical  perversion. 
It  is  imperative  that  we  look  beyond  form  to 


Ethics.  213 

content  if  we  would  prevent  the  degeneration 
of  ethics  into  a  perfectly  barren  doctrine  of 
good  intentions.  The  abstract  good-will  is 
an  empty  figment.  Beyond  peradventure  the 
good-will  is  the  center  of  the  moral  life,  but 
the  good-will  must  concrete  itself.  Indeed, 
the  good- will  willing  nothing  good  is  a  verbal 
manipulation.  The  contradiction  is  palpable. 
As  Professor  B.  P.  Bowne,  in  his  ^^Princi- 
ples of  Ethics,''  puts  it,  ^^Duty  ethics  and 
goods  ethics  must  be  combined  before  we 
reach  any  complete  moral  system.  Duty 
ethics  taken  alone  is  an  unlawful  abstraction 
resulting  from  considering  the  good-will 
apart  from  its  conditions  and  objects;  and 
the  goods  ethics  taken  alone  is  an  equally  un- 
lawful abstraction  resulting  from  considering 
conduct  apart  from  the  living  subject.  The 
good-will  must  aim  at  well-being,  and  well- 
being  is  realized  in  and  through  the  good- 
will.''  Every  expression  of  one's  nature 
must  have  the  moral  form,  and  the  moral 
form  must  realize  itself  in  normal  goods. 
Duty  absolutely  conceived  has  proven  its 


214         Jesus:  The  World  Teacher. 

inutility  in  the  work-a-day  world.  A  pro- 
fessor of  deserved  renown  in  one  of  our  great 
universities,  when  urged  to  assume  a  definite 
position  in  a  political  situation  that  was  not 
wholly  ideal,  replied  with  some  heat,  '^No 
man  can  make  me  choose  between  two  evils." 
His  notion  of  duty  was  categorical.  The 
relativity  of  practical  life  he  overlooked. 
Men  and  women,  as  creatures  of  strength 
and  weakness,  wisdom  and  ignorance,  vir- 
tues and  vices,  he  ignored.  His  world  was  a 
fictitious  one.  The  best  may  not  be  always 
realizable,  but  the  better  of  every  situation 
is  the  stepping-stone  to  the  best.  And  to  be 
moral  a  man  must  concrete  his  notion  of  duty 
in  every  situation  of  life.  We  can  not  escape 
action  because  a  situation  is  not  wholly  ideal. 
A  casual  survey  of  practical  life  stamps 
with  disapproval  the  man  who  is  content  with 
formal  rightness,  who  blindly  adheres  to 
duty  absolutely  conceived.  Kev.  Dr.  J.  M. 
Buckley,  editor  of  the  New  York  Christian 
Advocate,  tells  that  upon  one  occasion  he 
determined  to  refrain  from  casting  his  ballot 


Ethics.  215 

because  of  the  delinquencies  in  character  of 
the  candidates  presented.  On  the  day  of  the 
election  he  made  ready  to  leave  his  home 
for  an  outing.  Prior  to  his  departure  a  lady 
friend  asked  him  if  he  had  voted.  He  re- 
plied, ' '  No, ' '  and  told  her  why.  I  can  never 
forget,  he  says,  the  look  of  disdain  upon  her 
face  as  she  remarked,  ^^Well,  if  I  was  a  man 
and  had  the  opportunity  to  vote,  I  would 
vote  for  somebody  or  something.''  ^^It  is 
needless  to  say  that  I  remained  at  home  and 
voted.'' 

If  we  would  be  factors  for  the  well-being 
of  the  race  we  must  be  materially  right  as 
well  as  formally  right.  And  material  right- 
ness  means  duty  seeking  the  good  in  every 
situation.  Ethics  has  a  larger  sphere  than 
is  included  in  mere  will  and  motive.  Conse- 
quences are  inseparably  bound  up  with  all 
life.  The  citizen  who  declines  to  assume  re- 
sponsibility in  government  forfeits  his  mem- 
bership in  the  governmental  body.  Despite 
his  enthusiasm  for  the  right,  his  hue-and-cry 
of  no  compromise  with  evil,  no  leagues  with 


216         Jesus  :  The  World  Teacher. 

death,  no  covenants  with  hell,  no  com- 
munion with  darkness,  he  is  a  sanguinary 
anarchist,  a  destructive  nihilist.  If  empires, 
republics,  States,  municipalities,  were  de- 
pendent on  men  of  his  character  for  their 
perpetuity  and  efficiency,  their  day  of  decease 
would  be  at  hand. 

The  stickler  for  formal  rightness  is 
usually  the  misanthrope,  the  pessimist  in  the 
social  commonwealth.  His  biliary  duct  is 
overcharged.  He  sees  but  one  outcome  for 
the  Church  and  the  State ;  and  that  outcome 
is  irreparable  disaster.  Formal  rightness 
ringing  the  changes  on  freedom  demands 
that  the  right  of  suffrage  be  granted  to  all 
men  despite  their  mental  and  moral  unfitness. 
The  material  folly  of  such  an  action  has  been 
superabundantly  established  within  every 
parallel  of  the  American  Republic. 

Formal  rightness,  iterating  and  reiterat- 
ing individual  interest,  is  clamorous  for  the 
demolition  of  all  gigantic  combinations  of 
capital.  The  material  fatuity  of  such  an 
event  is  apparent  when  one  completes  his 


Ethics.  217 

ethical  thought.  The  form  of  Tightness  is 
possessed  by  the  Turkish  Empire,  but  Euro- 
pean and  American  capital  are  loath  to  in- 
vest in  the  Sultan's  domain  because  of  the 
absence  of  material  rightness.  The  basal 
fact  of  moral  experience  is  better  expressed 
by  the  notion  of  duty  than  by  the  notion  of 
the  good,  yet  high  ideals  are  vain  fantasies 
unless  they  realize  themselves  in  the  normal 
pleasures  and  fortune  of  all  men. 

All  strictures  on  duty  categorically  con- 
ceived do  not  invalidate  in  any  degree  sub- 
jective ethics.  Practical  life  demonstrates 
that  in  the  nature  and  insight  of  the  indi- 
vidual man  is  the  ideal  conception,  the  inner 
law.  This  inner  law  the  moral  subject  im- 
poses on  himself.  It  is  the  condition  of  all 
moral  activity.  It  is  the  idea  of  rightness 
and  the  inviolable  obligations  which  it  in- 
cludes that  lies  at  the  foundation  of  all  moral 
progress. 

The  basic  principle  of  the  political,  com- 
mercial, educational,  and  religious  life  of 
the  race  is,  to  use  the  phrase  of  Kant,  the 


218         Jesus  :  The  World  Teacher. 

autonomy  of  the  spirit.  As  a  vigorous 
thinker  asserts,  ''We  reach  the  truly  moral 
life  only  when  we  come  to  the  free  spirit 
giving  law  to  itself  in  accordance  with  its 
perceptions  of  right  reason.'^  If  man  is 
not  a  self-directing,  conscious,  rational,  and 
morally  invested  creature,  then  the  rewards 
and  penalties  that  attach  themselves  to  every 
aspect  of  life  are  vicious  and  absurd. 

David  Hume,  in  his  ^'Inquiry  Concerning 
Principles  of  Morals,''  wisely  remarks: 
*'Had  nature  made  no  original  moral  dis- 
tinctions independently  of  education,  distinc- 
tions founded  on  the  original  constitution  of 
the  mind,  the  words  honorable  and  shameful, 
lovely  and  odious,  noble  and  despicable,  had 
never  had  place  in  any  language;  nor  could 
politicians,  had  they  invented  these  terms, 
have  ever  been  able  to  render  them  intel- 
ligible or  make  them  convey  any  idea  to  the 
audience.''  But  it  is  worthy  of  all  repetition 
that  the  individual  man  must  complete  him- 
self in  the  normal  well-being  of  the  social 
unit.    The  outcome  of  moral  insight  realizing 


Ethics.  219 

itself  in  moral  conduct  is  a  moralized  hu- 
manity, and  this  is  the  highest  good  possible 
to  us. 

VI. 

History  admits  of  a  philosophic  interpre- 
tation if  life  is  other  than  a  hopeless  chaos. 
The  validity  of  legitimate  thought  and  voli- 
tion practical  life  declares  despite  the 
chimerical  thinking  of  the  sensational  phi- 
losopher and  the  vagaries  of  the  mechanical 
evolutionist.  And  with  a  philosophic  inter- 
pretation to  historical  unfoldment  the  af- 
firmation may  be  made  that  Jesus  Christ  in 
character  and  conduct  is  the  Ethicist  whose 
postulates  and  practice  are  without  flaw  or 
foible.  He  considered  men  and  women,  not 
hypothetically,  but  as  creatures  of  reality. 
He  gave  no  place  in  His  thought  to  abstrac- 
tions. He  personalized  His  teaching.  When 
He  spoke  of  love,  of  truth,  of  righteousness, 
of  purity,  He  incarnated  His  speech.  With 
theory  He  always  conjoined  practice.  In  His 
thought  He  repudiated  the  primacy  of  mat- 


220        Jesus  :  The  World  Teacher. 

ter.  At  no  time  did  He  intimate  that  phys- 
ical causation  was  a  reality  in  itself.  The 
subordination  of  matter  to  spirit  was  the 
recurring  decimal  of  His  thinking.  The 
abiding,  self -directing,  conscious,  thinking 
man  was  fundamental  in  His  thought.  From 
His  angle  of  vision,  man  in  his  lowest  estate 
is  not  a  brute,  but  a  potential  child  of  God. 
In  his  highest  estate  he  is  not  an  emergence 
from  the  brute,  but  an  actual  child  of  God. 
According  to  Jesus,  God  is  the  immanent, 
ever-active  cause  in  all  mental  and  moral 
unfolding,  not  a  blind,  persistent  force. 

The  categorical  conception  of  duty  Jesus 
did  not  accept.  He  functionalized  Himself 
among  men  as  citizen,  artisan,  friend, 
preacher,  i^hilanthropist.  He  was  not  will- 
ing to  be  formally  right  and  nothing  more. 
He  completed  form  by  giving  it  content.  The 
conception  of  the  good  as  held  by  the 
Hedonist,  the  Stoic,  the  Epicurean,  the  Utili- 
tarian, He  rejected.  From  Jesus'  point  of 
view,  individual  well-being  was  inclusive  of 
social    well-being.     In    seeking   the    normal 


Ethics.  221 

good  of  all  men,  the  individual  found  his 
own  good.  In  Jesus'  thought,  self-sacrifice 
was  the  only  sure  way  to  self-realization. 
The  man  must  integrate  himself  in  all  men. 

Jesus  in  His  teaching  and  character  gave 
a  value  to  man  approached  by  no  other 
ethicist.  He  founded  the  finite  nature  in  the 
Infinite,  and  thus  gave  an  inalienable  sacred- 
ness  to  every  man.  Mr.  Emerson,  in  his  ad- 
dress to  the  Senior  Divinity  Class  in  Cam- 
bridge, Massachusetts,  in  1838,  remarked, 
^^  Alone  in  all  history  Jesus  Christ  estimated 
the  greatness  of  man.  He  is,  I  think,  the 
only  soul  in  history  who  has  appreciated  the 
worth  of  a  man.'' 

Plato,  in  his  devotion  to  formal  right- 
ness,  wrote  wisely  concerning  the  just  and 
the  good,  but  he  did  not  consider  his  theories 
incompatible  with  infanticide  and  the  slay- 
ing of  the  helpless  and  aged.  Aristotle,  as 
an  ethical  formalist,  saw  in  the  perpetuity 
of  slavery  a  lasting  benefaction  to  the  race. 
The  potential  worth  and  the  high  destiny  of 


222         Jesus:  The  World  Teacher. 

mankiDd  these  notable  Greeks  did  uot  cor- 
rectly estimate. 

The  man  whose  baseness  gives  some  coun- 
tenance to  the  doctrine  of  anthropoidal  de- 
scent, or  the  man  whose  pseudo  penitence 
gives  flesh-and-blood  outline  to  hypocrisy, 
may  provoke  our  disgust,  but  never  can  we 
despair  of  any  man  if  we  share  in  the  view- 
point of  Jesus  Christ.  In  assuming  the  title 
Son  of  Man,  Jesus  declared  Himself  to  be 
a  mental  and  moral  unit  with  the  potential 
nature  of  all  men. 

Jesus  posited  God  as  the  moral  World- 
Governor.  Hence  a  moral  world  order 
exists.  This  interpretation  gives  to  all  life 
a  moral  integrity.  It  permits  no  event  to  be 
chaotic.  Causally  and  circumstantially  the 
moral  universe  is  integral.  Every  causal 
and  circumstantial  good  thing  is  the  heritage 
of  the  worker  of  righteousness.  Every 
causal  and  circumstantial  punishment  is  the 
Nemesis  of  the  evil  doer.  Jesus  made  of  the 
invisible  the  center  of  moral  gravity.  All 
temporal   and   spatial  limitation  He   disre- 


Ethics.  223 

garded.  The  eternal  world  was  more  vivid 
to  Him  than  the  world  of  time;  the  present 
but  the  segment  of  an  Infinite  arc. 

Live  in  obedience  to  Infinite  wisdom, 
goodness,  purity,  and  God  is  pledged  for 
your  compensation,  is  Jesus'  word.  The 
universe  is  a  moral  integration.  It  is  not 
possible  for  the  man  of  integrity  to  suffer 
permanent  loss.  Conscious  of  this  great 
fact,  Jesus  lived  a  life  of  unique  distinction. 
His  devotion  to  righteousness  has  never  been 
paralleled.  His  love  for  man  has  never  been 
approximated.  In  the  realization  of  Him- 
self through  self  expenditure.  He  was  de- 
terred by  no  adverse  conditions.  If  the  path 
of  duty  was  rugged,  He  chose  the  rugged 
way.  If  persecution  awaited  Him  in  the  per- 
formance of  His  life  mission.  He  brooked  the 
persecution.  If  the  shame  of  the  cross  was 
the  finale  of  His  allegiance  to  the  kingdom 
of  righteousness.  He  endured  the  shame. 
Participating  in  the  spirit  and  adhering  to 
His  ethical  teaching,  men  have  gladly  immo- 
lated themselves  upon  the  altars  of  patriot- 


224         Jesus:  The  World  Teacher. 

ism,  of  lioino,  of  truth,  of  human  brother- 
hood. This  moral  interpretation  to  life 
Jesus  gave.  And  His  interpretation  per- 
sonalized in  Himself  has  become  the  master 
light  of  the  world's  seeing  and  its  chief  spir- 
itual inspiration. 


Chapter  VIII. 
INNOVATION 


15 


Our  whole  thought  of  God  and  man ;  our  entire  working 
philosophy  of  life;  our  modes  of  intellectual  vision,  types  of 
feeling,  habits  of  will ;  our  instinctive,  customary,  rational, 
emotional,  institutional,  and  social  existence  is  everywhere 
encompassed  and  interpenetrated  by  Christ.  His  empire 
over  our  civilization  is  complete  in  this  sense,  that  it  expands 
only  under  His  power,  and  can  not  define  or  describe  itself, 
except  in  terms  of  His  teaching  and  character.  We  are  here 
under  the  shadow  of  an  Infinite  Name;  we  are  living  and 
dying  in  the  heart  of  an  enfolding  Presence. 

We  are  compelled  to  acknowledge  that  the  secret  mold- 
ing energy  of  our  entire  civilization  is  the  mind  of  Christ. 
It  is  out  of  this  consciousness  of  the  indwelling,  wide-spread- 
ing,  and   overruling  mind  of   Christ  that  the  belief   comes 

in  His  essential  Deity. „    .    ^^t^t^^^^t 

—GEORGE  A.  GORDON. 


It  is  the  historical  task  of  Christianity  to  assume,  with 
every  succeeding  age,  a  fresh  metamorphosis,  and  to  be  for- 
ever spiritualizing,   more   and   more,    her  understanding  of 

^^"^'-  -AMIEL. 


INNOVATION. 

I. 

In  the  best  sense  of  the  word,  the  innova- 
tor is  the  reformer,  the  maker  of  all  things 
new,  the  champion  of  wholeness,  the  apostle 
of  love,  light,  liberty. 

Jesus  was  not  the  prisoner  of  ideas,  past 
or  present.  He  assumed  His  place  among 
men  as  Incarnate  newness.  Neither  His 
thought  nor  His  service  graced  the  chariot- 
wheels  of  the  past.  His  doctrines  and  deeds 
were  ever  prophetic  of  new  and  brighter 
days.  He  was  not  eager  to  escape  the  af- 
fronts and  oppositions  which  intimidate 
apologetic  and  timorous  men.  He  did  not 
slip  through  the  world  as  a  fawning  foot- 
man, nor  as  an  audacious  interloper;  but 
with  an  incomparable  courage  He  fronted 
the  sanguinary  stubbornness  of  judicial  un- 
believers   and   the   conceited   contumacy   of 

227 


228        Jesus  :  The  World  Teacher. 

prejudicial  thinkers.  He  was  intent  upon 
cutting  a  straight  road  to  things,  honest,  just, 
true,  pure,  lovely,  and  of  good  report.  For 
the  practicalizing  of  love,  joy,  peace,  long- 
suffering,  gentleness,  goodness,  faith,  meek- 
ness, self-control.  He  wrought  through  suc- 
cessive days  and  years. 

The  spirit  of  innovation  is  the  spirit  of 
the  immanent  and  transcendent  God,  ever 
manifesting  Himself  among  and  through 
men.  The  believer  and  the  thinker  are 
coerced  by  the  demands  of  exact  thought  to 
give  their  unqualified  assent  to  the  spirit  of 
progress.  Ends,  in  the  ultimate  sense,  do 
not  exist.  Apparent  ends  are  in  reality  new 
beginnings.  ^' Every  ultimate  fact  is  the 
first  of  a  new  series ;  every  general  law  only 
a  particular  fact  of  some  more  general  law 
presently  to  disclose  itself,''  writes  a  New 
England  seer. 

The  vanguards  on  the  yesterday  of  sci- 
ence, reform,  government,  education,  are  the 
rear-guards  to-day.  The  Pauline  writings 
make  large  use  of  the  figures,  newness  of 


Innovation.  229 

life,  renewal  of  the  spirit  of  the  mind,  new 
creature  in  Christ  Jesus,  putting  on  the  new 
man,  which  is  renewed  in  knowledge  after  the 
image  of  Him  that  created  him.  As  to  the 
imperative  need  of  spiritual  newness,  Jesus 
was  explicit  in  His  colloquy  with  the  master 
of  Israel:  '^Except  a  man,"  he  averred,  ^^be 
born  again,  (made  anew),  he  can  not  see, 
(understand),  the  kingdom  of  God." 

These  words  are  affirmative  of  soul  prog- 
ress: that  every  promise  of  the  man  within 
has  innumerable  fulfillments;  that  in  every 
soul  there  is  a  greater  possibility.  Innova- 
tion is  the  smnmoning  of  all  things  to  judg- 
ment. The  State,  the  school,  the  Church,  the 
laws  and  usages  of  trade,  the  individual  man, 
are  not  exempt  from  the  relentless  search- 
ings  of  the  reform  spirit. 

The  innovator  is  the  champion  of  the 
whole  truth.  He  refuses  to  lose  his  balance 
maugre  the  importunity  of  partialities  and 
prejudices.  God's  world  is  an  entirety,  and 
demands  integrity  in  our  every  word  and 
work.    It  is  fatuity  personified  for  any  man 


230        Jesus  :  The  'World  Teacher. 

to  make  of  himself  an  impediment  to   the 
wholeness  of  tliouglitliood  and  tliingbood. 

Spiritual  well-being  consists  in  our  pious 
attitude  toward  the  perennial  newness  of  life. 
The  authority  of  the  days  agone  is  of  slight 
avail  for  the  day  that  now  is.  We  can  not 
with  impunity  detach  life  from  its  universal 
relations.  The  social,  the  integral  nature  of 
all  being,  organic  and  inorganic,  is  every- 
where perceptible.  A  spiritual  voice  is 
eagerly  sought  by  the  lowest  form  of  crea- 
tion. The  wayside  rock,  the  stalactite,  the 
mica-flake,  besought  Hugh  Miller  and  Sir 
Roderick  Murchison  to  become  their  mouth- 
pieces among  men.  Mars,  Venus,  Saturn, 
Jupiter,  prevailed  upon  Sir  AVilliam  Herschel 
and  Sir  Isaac  Newton  to  become  their  ora- 
tors. The  pickerel  and  the  halibut  foimd  in 
Professor  Agassiz  their  spiritual  incarna- 
tion, while  in  Audubon  and  James  Buckham 
the  vireo,  the  pewee,  the  oriole,  the  blue- jay, 
find  enchanting  speakers.  The  bush,  the 
beast,  the  bird,  the  stone,  the  sea,  the  moun- 
tain, the  mote,  declare  in  vociferous  vowels 


Innovation.  231 

their  discontent  if  a  voice  in  tlieir  behoof  is 
not  uplifted  by  synthetic  and  syllabic  man. 
Gravity,  chemical  cohesion,  organic  and  in- 
organic speechlessness  can  not  content  them. 
The  sciences  of  botany,  ichthyology,  physics, 
geology,  chemistry,  astronomy,  are  insub- 
stantial dreams  save  as  they  publish  them- 
selves in  the  person  of  thinkers  and  doers. 
The  wholeness  of  life  is  the  overwhelming 
fact.     And  the  innovator  is  its  apostle. 

Ultra  conservation  is  a  pause  on  the  last 
moment.  It  emphasizes  limitation.  It  gives 
undue  prominence  to  circumstance.  It  is  a 
practical  unbeliever  in  the  infinitude  of 
God's  universe.  It  is  always  an  apologist, 
never  a  polemic.  The  innovator  contem- 
plates all  life  as  a  spiritual  affiliation.  The 
inferior  forms  of  life  re-exist  and  reappear 
in  the  finer  world  of  spirit,  and  fill  the  world 
with  their  fame.  This  re-existence  and  reap- 
pearance we  designate  as  merchant,  me- 
chanic, poet,  philosopher,  farmer,  inventor, 
scientist,  and  every  other  conceivable  form  of 
mental  activity. 


232         Jesus  :  The  World  Teacher. 

The  analyst  and  the  experimenter  find 
themselves  baffled  in  their  essays  to  establish 
boundary  lines  between  the  man  and  his 
method,  between  spirit  and  its  projection. 

The  innovator  has  for  his  goal,  not  a 
special  but  an  infinite  benefit.  He  sees  in  all 
particular  and  personal  ends  a  body  of  death. 
He  sees  in  all  general  and  social  ends  life 
for  evermore.  He  avows  with  ceaseless  repe- 
tition the  immensity  and  eternity  of  the 
mental  and  moral  universe  in  which  we  find 
ourselves.  To  seek  to  arrest  and  fixate  any 
form  of  thought  or  action  that  has  for  its 
objective  a  universal  legitimacy,  is  to  sin 
against  the  Holy  Ghost.  Such  a  misdoing  is 
an  impeachment  of  God's  will  concerning  us. 
It  is  the  apotheosis  of  ourselves.  It  is  a 
contumacious  attempt  to  destroy  the  cosmic 
beauty  and  beneficence  of  our  Father's  world. 

The  history  of  the  soul  in  its  best  estate 
is  found  in  its  fullness  of  reception  and  ex- 
pression. The  reform  spirit  has  all  worlds 
for  its  arena.  What  for  verbal  convenience 
we  term  knowledge,  virtue,  power,  are  the 


Innovation.  233 

f orthgoings  of  the  reform  spirit  against  igno- 
rance, necessity,  and  weakness.  It  is  the 
man  seizing  the  opportunity  for  world  con- 
ciuest.  Souls  of  such  temper  have  never 
failed  to  ultimately  command  the  admiration 
and  gratitude  of  their  fellows.  They  are  its 
saviors  from  sin,  its  redeemers  from  spiritual 
insolvency,  its  benefactors  in  the  midst  of 
clamant  need. 

II. 

Jesus,  in  His  interpretation  of  spirit,  of 
its  activity  and  interrelatedness,  is  the  true 
innovator,  the  sane  reformer,  the  apostle  of 
love,  light,  and  liberty.  He  announced  Him- 
self as  the  Truth  in  the  presence  of  twelve 
men  who,  in  many  respects,  were  spiritual 
dullards,  obtuse  moralists.  The  announce- 
ment elicited  from  them  no  enthusiastic  re- 
sponse. The  centuries  and  millennia,  how- 
ever, have  borne  silent  and  vocal  attestation 
to  the  verity  of  His  claim. 

As  Incarnate  Truth,  Jesus  introduced  an 
innovation  both  in  the  speculative  and  prac- 


234        Jesus  :  The  World  Teacher. 

tical  world  in  His  concept  of  God.  He  gave 
to  this  concept,  through  His  own  character 
and  conduct,  an  inviolable  completeness.  He 
invested  it  with  a  moral  and  spiritual  inte- 
gration which  is  at  once  ideal  and  practical. 
He  made  it  impossible,  through  His  word  and 
work,  for  any  theistic,  metaphysical,  or 
ethical  postulate  to  save  itself  from  irrecov- 
erable collapse,  only  as  it  is  in  agreement 
with  His  teaching  and  life.  Jesus  affirmed: 
God  is  a  Spirit,  unitary,  abiding,  self-deter- 
mining, universal,  intelligent,  ethical.  In 
conflict  with  His  word  and  work  all  sensuous 
conception  of  Deity  is  utterly  frustrated. 

The  mythologies  of  Greece  and  Rome  and 
the  sensualities  of  heathen  religions  find 
themselves  vehemently  outlawed  by  the  spir- 
itual conception  of  Jesus.  And  this  outlawr)^ 
has  been  extended  to  every  system  of  thought 
and  every  i^liase  of  conduct  that  gives  prece- 
dence to  matter  and  impersonalism.  Legiti- 
mate thought,  finding  its  vantage-ground  in 
the  concept  of  Jesus,  disallows  the  question- 
begging  of  John  Locke,  August  Comte,  Her- 


Innovation.  235 

bert  Spencer,  Ernest  Haeckel,  Democritus, 
Tliales,  or  Heraciitus. 

Water,  fire,  atoms  gross  and  refined, 
primitive  fire-mist,  sensations  vivid  and 
faint,  are  of  the  earth,  earthy,  and  mnst  go 
the  way  of  all  the  earth.  God  as  a  Spirit  is 
the  supreme  causality  behind  all  phenomena. 
He  is  the  basal  reality,  the  world-ground. 
Between  finite  consciousness  and  all  organ- 
ized life,  sense  faculties  are  not  able  to  medi- 
ate. Between  man,  the  finite  knower,  and  the 
world  as  a  system  of  objective  existence,  a 
bond  of  connection  in  the  realm  of  the  sensu- 
ous does  not  exist.  Professor  Tyndall  once 
remarked  that  it  was  easier  for  a  man  to  lift 
himself  by  his  own  waistband  than  for  him  to 
prove  any  causal  relation  between  his  organ- 
ized life  and  his  consciousness.  But  when  we 
accept  Jesus'  notion  of  God  our  difficulties 
vanish.  Between  man  the  finite  knower  and 
the  world  without,  God,  the  ever-present, 
ever-working  Spirit,  effects  a  continuous  con- 
nection. 


236        Jesus  ;  The  World  Teacher. 

III. 

God  as  the  ever-efficient  cause  in  all  life 
Jesus  explicitly  taught.  '*My  Father  work- 
elh  hitherto,  and  I  work;''  ''The  Father  tliat 
dwelleth  in  Me,  He  doeth  the  works;''  ''God 
is  not  the  God  of  the  dead,  but  of  the  living;" 
"I  must  work  the  works  of  Him  that  sent 
Me,"  are  a  few  of  His  many  utterances  de- 
clarative of  the  immanent,  operative  God. 
Deistic  theses  find  no  warrant  in  Jesus '  words 
nor  in  His  work.  Impersonalism  is  likewise 
repudiated  by  Him. 

The  bruited  warfare  between  science  and 
religion  finds  no  acknowledgment  in  Jesus' 
teaching.  As  causal  explanation,  science  is 
without  standing.  As  classification,  as  co- 
ordination according  to  rule,  as  a  descriptive 
order  of  procedure,  science  is  of  great  value. 
Any  study  of  Jesus'  words  and  of  His  ac- 
tivity that  goes  beyond  the  superficial,  easily 
discerns  the  above  distinction. 

The  visible,  audible,  tangible  world  as  its 
own  fashioner  Jesus  ceaselessly  denied.  The 
visible,  audible,  tangible  world  as  the  expres- 


Innovation.  237 

sion  of  Infinite  Wisdom  and  Will  Jesus  cease- 
lessly affirmed.  Legitimate  thought  to-day- 
roots  itself  in  the  teaching  of  Jesus.  It  de- 
clares the  validity  of  science  in  the  realm  of 
the  phenomenal.  It  declares  the  invalidity  of 
science  in  the  realm  of  the  metaphysical. 

IV. 

Jesus,  in  His  announcement  of  the  Father- 
hood of  God,  made  anew  the  thoughts  of  men 
concerning  the  Infinite.  No  prophet,  poet,  or 
philosopher  had  conceived  of  God  in  such  fa- 
miliar terms.  For  Moses,  He  was  the  Judge 
of  all  the  earth;  for  Nehemiah,  He  was  the 
God  of  Heaven ;  for  Isaiah,  He  was  the  Holy 
One  of  Israel;  for  Plato,  He  was  Pure 
Reason;  for  Aristotle,  He  was  Impassive 
Will;  while  to  other  of  the  Greek  philoso- 
phers. His  nature  was  nebulous  and  non- 
ethical. 

The  qualities  that  inhere  in  Fatherhood 
were  not  apposite,  in  their  thinking,  to  the 
Infinite  Personality.  Jesus  stands  separate 
and  alone  in  His  appreciation  of  the  ethical 


238        Jesus:  The  World  Teacher. 

nature  of  God.  God,  the  Creator  of  the  ends 
of  the  earth,  the  Preserver  of  all  jflesh,  the 
Lord  of  Hosts,  the  King  of  kings,  according 
to  Jesus,  finds  His  highest  function  in  the 
office  of  Father. 

^*  Whenever  a  true  theory  appears,  it  will 
be  its  own  evidence.  Its  test  is  that  it  will 
explain  all  phenomena, ' '  remarks  a  discrimi- 
nating writer.  Jesus'  teaching  as  to  God  is 
explanatory  of  all  phenomena.  God  is  the 
primal  and  ever-operative  Cause.  He  is  a 
Spirit,  and  therefore  omnipresent.  He  is  the 
Father  of  spirits,  the  God  of  all  comfort. 
His  solicitude  in  behalf  of  sinning,  striving, 
suffering  humankind  is  so  minute,  says  Jesus, 
that  He  reckons  the  hairs  of  our  head. 

Beyond  peradventure,  Jesus'  concept  of 
God,  incarnated  as  it  was  in  Himself,  has  es- 
tablished, strengthened,  settled  philosophic 
and  practical  thought.  No  thought  system 
has  to-day  any  repute  that  is  worthy  of  men- 
tion exclusive  of  the  view-point  of  Jesus. 
Positivism  and  Causal  Evolutionism  made 
bold  essays  to  eliminate  Jesus'  conception  of 


Innovation.  239 

God  from  the  province  of  valid  thinking.  But 
their  philosophic  mischief  has  returned  upon 
their  own  heads,  and  their  violent  dealing  has 
come  down  upon  their  own  philosophic  pates. 
'^The  Unknowable,"  '^ Persistent  Force," 
^^ Deified  Humanity,"  ^ ' Impersonalism, " 
i  i  Priniitive  Fire-Mist, ' '  are  the  merriment  of 
sane  thought.  So  true  is  Jesus'  doctrine  con- 
cerning God,  to  the  mental  and  moral  expe- 
rience of  humankind,  that  in  this  year  of 
grace  no  labored  argument  is  needful  to  give 
it  permanence  and  power.  The  aspiration 
of  spirit, -the  oppressive  sense  of  sin,  the  un- 
speakable soul-hunger,  the  love  of  man  latent 
and  patent  for  the  pure  and  the  good,  the 
outreaching  of  the  helpless  hand  for  Infinite 
help,  the  cry  of  the  child  for  father-love,  are 
phenomena  that  find  no  complete  answer  in 
Moses'  Judge  of  all  the  earth,  in  Nehemiah's 
God  of  Heaven,  in  Isaiah's  Holy  One  of 
Israel,  in  Plato's  Pure  Reason,  in  Aristotle's 
Impassive  Will,  in  Herbert  Spencer's  *^ Per- 
sistent Force,"  or  in  August  Comte's  ^^ Dei- 
fied Humanity."    But  Jesus'  interpretation 


240         Jesus  :  The  "World  Teacher. 

of  God  is  integral.  All  that  the  mind  of  man 
can  fashion  as  queiy,  and  all  that  the  heart 
of  man  can  yearn  for,  is  not  only  answered, 
but  also  transcended,  in  Jesus'  conception  of 
God,  our  ever-living,  ever-working,  ever-lov- 
ing Father. 

Professor  James,  in  his  ^ '  The  Will  to  Be- 
lieve," inquires,  ^'What  are  the  essential  fea- 
tures of  Theism?"  His  answer  is  a  re- 
affirmation of  Jesus'  word.  ^' First,  it  is  es- 
sential that  God  be  conceived  as  the  deepest 
Power  in  the  universe ;  and  second,  He  must 
be  conceived  under  the  form  of  a  mental  per- 
sonality. The  Personality  need  not  be  de- 
termined intrinsically  any  further  than  is  in- 
volved in  the  holding  of  certain  things  dear 
and  in  the  recognition  of  our  dispositions 
toward  those  things,  the  things  themselves 
being  all  good  and  righteous  things.  But 
extrinsically  considered,  so  to  speak,  God's 
Personality  is  to  be  regarded,  like  any  other 
personality,  as  something  lying  outside  of  my 
own  and  other  than  me,  and  whose  existence 
I  simply  come  upon  and  find.    A  power  not 


Innovation.  241 

ourselves  then,  which  not  only  makes  for 
righteousness,  but  means  it,  and  which  recog- 
nizes us— such  is  the  definition  which  I  think 
nobody  will  be  inclined  to  dispute.  Various 
are  the  attempts  to  shadow  forth  the  other 
lineaments  of  so  supreme  a  Personality  to 
our  human  imagination ;  various  the  ways  of 
conceiving  in  what  mode  the  recognition,  the 
hearkening  to  our  cry,  can  come.  Some  are 
gross  and  idolatrous ;  some  are  the  most  sus- 
tained efforts  man's  intellect  has  ever  made 
to  keep  still  living  on  that  subtle  edge  of 
things  where  thought  and  speech  expire.  But 
with  all  these  differences,  the  essence  re- 
mains unchanged.  In  whatever  other  re- 
spects the  Divine  Personality  may  differ 
from  ours  or  may  resemble  it,  the  two  are 
consanguineous  at  least  in  this— that  both 
have  purposes  for  which  they  care,  and  each 
can  hear  the  other's  call.'' 

When  brought  into  antagonism  with  the 
completeness  of  Jesus'  thought,  Neo-Platon- 
ism,  Eclecticism,  Scholasticism,  Empiricism, 
Encyclopedism,    Causal    Evolutionism,    find 

16 


242         Jesus  :  The  World  Teacher. 

themselves  dissolved  as  in  a  resistless  men- 
struum. Philosophic  vagaries  are  easily  dis- 
covered when  brought  into  the  light  of  Ilis 
thinking.  No  mental  output  dealing  with 
thoughthood  or  thinghood  is  anything  more 
than  a  phantasmagoric  passage  save  as  it  is 
the  iterance  of  Jesus'  doctrine. 

All  theologies,  whether  from  Augustine, 
Origen,  Luther,  Wesley,  Calvin,  or  Paul,  in 
comparison  with  the  words  of  Jesus,  are 
swept  away  as  by  a  flood.  He  is  the  final 
arbiter  of  all  truth,  for  He  is  Himself  the 
Truth. 

Jesus  is  the  true  innovator  in  His  con- 
ception of  man.  Emerson's  apostrophe,  in 
his  *  ^  Method  of  Nature, ' '  is  genetically  at  one 
with  Jesus'  appreciation:  ^^0  rich  and  va- 
rious Man!  thou  palace  of  sight  and  sound, 
carrying  in  thy  senses  the  morning  and  the 
night  and  the  unfathomable  galaxy;  in  thy 
brain  the  geometry  of  the  city  of  God ;  in  thy 
heart  the  bower  of  love  and  the  realms  of 
right  and  wrong!" 

The  virtues  that  glitter  for  commenda- 


Innovation.  243 

tion  Jesus  left  for  the  superficial  observer. 
As  the  Teacher  of  teachers,  as  the  Practical- 
izer  of  ideals,  we  can  not  picture  Jesus  find- 
ing satiety  for  His  mind  and  heart  save  as 
He  pierced  the  deep  solitude  of  absolute 
ability  and  worth.  What  self-aggrandize- 
ment accepted  as  a  criterion  of  value  He  re- 
nounced. It  is  not  a  herculean  labor  to  se- 
cure the  praise  of  the  self-seeker,  nor  is  it 
arduous  to  satisfy  the  sensuous  enthusiast. 
Jesus  was  a  student  of  the  beautiful  and 
beneficent  indices  of  rectitude.  The  pulsa- 
tions of  virtue  alone  engrossed  Him.  And 
these  pulsations  He  discovered  while  His  con- 
temporaries walked  in  darkness.  ^^Why  eat- 
eth  your  Master  with  publicans  and  sin- 
ners!" queried  the  superficial  ethicists  of 
Jesus'  day.  The  only  conceivable  answer  to 
such  an  interrogation  is:  The  candid  soul, 
despite  its  criminality,  is  potentially  a  new- 
born bard  of  the  Holy  Ghost,  the  kingdom 
of  righteousness  in  embryo,  the  child  and  co- 
worker in  latency  of  God,  the  infinitely  wise, 
powerful,  and  good. 


244         Jesus  :  The  World  Teacher. 

To  an  eariy  missionary  in  India  a  skep- 
tical observer  remarked:  *^You  surely  do 
not  expect  to  convert  these  idolatrous  hordes 
to  the  religion  of  Jesus  Christ.  It  is  my 
opinion  that  your  undertaking  would  be 
easier  of  accomplishment  if  you  attempted  to 
transmute  one  of  these  blocks  of  stone  into 
a  breathing,  thinking  embodiment  of  the 
Christian  religion.''  This  judgment  is  of  a 
kind  with  the  age-long  doubt  of  the  possible 
in  man. 

The  man  of  progress,  of  newness,  never 
sees  the  same  object  twice.  With  his  own 
enlargement,  the  object  acquires  new  aspects. 
We  nullify  our  judgment  if  we  insist  that  the 
actual  man  is  identical  with  the  potential 
man.  Such  an  insistence  is  the  invariable  an- 
nouncement of  our  non-growth,  and  non- 
growth  is  the  synonym  of  death.  When  Jesus 
said  to  Matthew,  ^'Come,  follow  Me,''  he  was 
not  fixated  in  the  Master's  thought  as  a 
public  plunderer,  but  as  a  potential  upbuilder 
of  the  kingdom  of  God.  Nor  did  Simon 
Peter,  James,  and  John  find  themselves  ar- 


Innovation.  245 

rested  in  Jesus'  thinking  as  Galilean  fisher- 
men. In  them  He  rather  saw  the  surging 
tides  of  life  under  the  control  of  the  Infinite 
Spirit  enriching  all  peoples  of  the  earth.  In 
the  dust  of  the  actual  He  always  saw  the 
pearl  of  the  possible.  And  this  appraisement 
of  man  is  the  only  conceivable  indemnification 
which  the  lover  and  worker  of  good  finds  in 
the  midst  of  unspeakable  moral  perversities. 
Jesus'  conception  of  man  is  startlingly 
new.  It  is  for  us  to-day  a  series  of  surprises. 
Again  and  again  we  find  ourselves  severely 
taxed  in  our  efforts  to  adjust  individual 
and  social  life  to  the  Master's  ever-advancing 
view.  It  was  a  dictum  of  Aristotle  that  no 
man  could  practice  virtue  who  lived  the  life 
of  a  laborer.  The  potential  in  man  was  not 
vivid  to  the  mind  of  the  great  Peripatetic. 

VI. 

As  regards  the  relatedness  of  the  individ- 
ual man  to  God,  Jesus  allowed  no  oppor- 
tunity to  escape  to  declare  man's  utter  in- 
sufficiency in  himself.    *^In  God  all  things 


246         Jesus  :  The  World  Teacher. 

[man  included]  live,  move,  and  have  their  be- 
ing.'^ Of  Himself  as  the  son  of  Joseph,  as 
a  man  among  men.  He  averred,  ^^The  words 
that  I  speak  nnto  you  I  speak  not  of  Myself: 
but  the  Father  that  dwell eth  in  Me,  He  doeth 
the  works;''  ''The  Son  can  do  nothing  of 
Himself. ' ' 

According  to  Jesus,  God  is  the  World- 
Ground,  the  Basal  Reality,  the  Father  of 
Spirits,  the  Savior  of  men.  Ethically,  no  less 
than  metaphysically,  God  is  the  Supreme  Will 
among  men.  All  life  is  founded  in  Him,  and 
all  life  is  transcended  by  Him.  No  man  is 
physically  self-sufiicient.  His  bread  can  not 
be  accounted  for  inductively.  Something 
more  is  involved  than  the  loaf,  the  mill,  the 
field,  the  baker,  the  miller,  the  farmer.  These 
are  but  modes  of  operation  which  in  them- 
selves are  nothing. 

**  Back  of  the  loaf  is  the  snowy  flour, 
Back  of  the  flour  the  mill ; 
Back  of  the  mill  is  the  wheat  and  the  shower, 
And  the  sun,  and  the  Father's  will." 

Legitimate  thought  never  wearies  of  as- 
serting ''the  Father's  will"  as  the  ground 


Innovation.  247 

of  the  existence  of  sun,  shower,  wheat,  mill, 
flour,  and  loaf. 

Similarly  is  the  moral  and  spiritual  na- 
ture of  man  conditioned.  The  immanent  and 
transcendent  God  is  demanded  by  exact 
thought  in  the  ethical  and  spiritual  life  as 
truly  as  in  the  metaphysical  realm.  Hence 
the  word  of  Jesus,  ^^  Except  a  man  be  born  of 
the  Spirit  [find  a  continual  renewal  of  him- 
self in  God],  he  can  not  enter  into  the  king- 
dom of  God,''  is  exact  thinking.  Excluded 
man  is  from  the  upper  ranges  of  life  save 
as  he  finds  in  God  his  continuous  being. 

The  doctrine  of  conversion  thus  com- 
mands our  assent,  not  on  the  ground  pri- 
marily of  an  isolated  individual  experience, 
but  on  the  ground  of  all  life  finding  its  exist- 
ence in  and  through  God. 

VII. 

Jesus  gave  to  social  membership  a  new 
meaning.  He  first  promulgated  the  doctrine 
that  chieftaincy  in  life  lay  not  through 
Sybaritism,  but  through  sacrificial  service; 


248        Jesus  :  The  World  Teacher. 

not  through  political  preferment,  nor  per- 
sonal privilege,  but  tlirough  the  propagation 
of  ourselves  for  the  common  weal.  Of  Him- 
self He  avowed,  ^^The  Son  of  Man  came  not 
to  be  ministered  unto,  but  to  minister,  and  to 
give  His  life  a  ransom  for  many.'^  In  Chris- 
tian discipleship  is  exemplified  the  paradox 
of  the  highest  self-realization  issuing  from 
the  most  complete  self-renunciation. 

Aristippus,  Antisthenes,  Epicurus,  Zeno, 
did  not  discern  this  great  truth ;  nor  is  it  dis- 
cerned to-day  by  any  of  the  ethical  disciples 
of  Jeremy  Bentham,  John  Stuart  Mill,  Her- 
bert Spencer.  In  announcing  this  doctrine, 
Jesus  did  nothing  more  than  complete  His 
thought.  In  Him  there  was  an  evident  spirit 
of  revolt  against  all  incompleteness.  Self- 
finding  through  self-abnegation  is  no  new 
doctrine  metaphysically.  The  seed  comes  to 
itself  in  the  luscious  fruit  and  golden  grain. 
The  path  which  it  treads  is  marked  at  every 
step  by  self-sacrifice.  The  stone  of  the  moun- 
tain surrenders  itself  for  the  enrichment  of 
the  valley  below  and  thus  enters  a  higher 


Innovation.  249 

range  of  being.  The  ray  of  light  buries  itself 
in  the  dull  earth  for  a  season,  and  then  re- 
appears in  the  beauty  and  fragrance  of  the 
violet  and  the  lily.  The  merchant  feeds  fat 
his  love  of  gain,  not  by  self-indulgence,  but 
by  physical  and  mental  disbursement.  The 
student  opens  the  door  of  knowledge,  not 
through  nonchalance,  but  by  strenuous  ex- 
penditure of  himself.  The  child  reaches  a 
wise  and  effective  maturity  through  the  sub- 
servience of  its  will  to  the  parental  will. 
This  is  the  order  of  life.  And  yet  ethical 
theory,  exclusive  of  the  doctrine  of  Jesus,  has 
always  oscillated  between  a  useless  abstrac- 
tion and  a  sensual  indulgence.  Apply,  said 
Jesus,  the  principle  of  all  life  to  your  mem- 
bership in  societ}^  In  so  doing  you  will  find 
local  loss  reappearing  as  universal  gain;  you 
will  find  individuality  reappearing  as  catho- 
licity;  you  will  find  the  partial  man  reappear- 
ing as  the  whole  man.  Gradually,  but  with 
certainty,  humankind  is  coming  to  that  angle 
of  vision  where  the  exceeding  practicalness 


250         Jesus  :  The  World  Teacher. 

and    profit    of    Jesus'     doctrine    is    fully- 
esteemed. 

The  social  body  is  perpetuated  through 
individual  subordination.  And  the  individual 
perpetuates  himself  through  his  re-existence 
in  the  social  body.  The  self-denials  of  life 
thus  prove  themselves  ultimately  to  be  the 
real  utilties  of  life.  In  the  final  analysis  the 
common  good  and  the  individual  good  are  in 
perfect  coincidence.  In  giving  to  society 
the  ideal  of  sacrificial  service,  Jesus  saved 
it  from  an  impending  death.  Social  decease 
is  inevitable  if  each  for  all,  and  all  for  each, 
is  not  the  regnant  spirit. 

VIII. 

Jesus  announced  Himself  as  the  Light  of 
the  world,  as  Incarnate  Love,  as  the  Spiritual 
Liberator  of  the  race.  His  assuring  words 
are:  ''He  that  followeth  Me  shall  not  walk 
in  darkness,  but  shall  have  the  light  of  life; 
as  the  Father  hath  loved  Me,  so  have  I  loved 
you ;  continue  ye  in  My  love ;  if  the  Son  shall 
make  you  free,  ye  shall  be  free  indeed.'' 


Innovation.  251 

These  words  made  flesh  in  the  Son  of  God 
have  given  newness  to  individual  and  col- 
lective life.  The  hour  of  mental  and  moral 
darkness  for  the  myriad  millions  of  human- 
kind has  been  banished  to  the  perpetual 
gloom  of  Pluto's  underworld.  Jesus,  as  the 
Light  of  the  world,  shed  a  luster  hitherto 
unseen  on  the  Greek  Demos,  the  Roman  pro- 
letariat, the  Jewish  commonalty.  And  these 
common  folk  of  the  first  Christian  century 
are  the  prototype  of  the  common  folk  in  all 
days  and  within  all  parallels. 

With  the  Incarnation  the  social  body  for 
the  first  time  in  human  history  began  an  un- 
deviating  x)rogress  toward  abiding  unity  and 
co-operative  service.  After  the  advent  of 
Jesus  the  respect  for  persons  which  had 
characterized  all  pre-Christian  civilizations 
found  itself  under  a  withering  reproach. 
Jesus  championed  man  without  regard  for 
place,  property,  or  power.  He  did  not  give 
countenance  to  the  artificial  distinctions  with 
which  the  Greek  aristocrat,  the  Roman  pa- 
trician, and  the  Jewish  exclusionist  had  in- 


252         Jesus:  The  World  Teacher. 

vested  themselves.  It  was  character,  not 
chattels,  which  elicited  His  esteem.  It  was 
the  image  and  likeness  of  God  for  wliich  He 
searched  among  all  men,  and  not  the  tinsel 
and  wrappage  of  wealth  or  preferment. 

No  pages  of  history  are  so  criminally  in- 
carnadined with  the  blood  of  men  as  those 
of  the  first  Christian  century.  In  Rome,  dur- 
ing the  days  which  proximately  and  actually 
marked  the  ministry  of  Jesus,  the  gladiato- 
rial combats  between  captives  and  slaves 
were  the  favorite  amusement  for  the  patri- 
cian class.  For  these  pseudo  leaders  of  the 
social  commonwealth  purple  currents  gushing 
from  the  founts  of  human  life  afforded  inex- 
pressible delectation. 

In  the  year  48  A.  D.,  during  the  reign  of 
Claudius  Caesar,  the  passion  of  the  populace 
for  gory  scenes  was  so  great  that  the  em- 
peror gratified  them  with  a  sea-fight  in  which 
the  fleets,  manned  by  nineteen  thousand 
gladiators,  engaged  in  actual  conflict. 

The  Emperor  Caligula  had  an  unappeas- 
able hunger  and  insatiable  thirst  for  human 


Innovation.  253 

blood.  The  old  and  the  infirm  were  thrown 
to  his  wild  beasts.  At  his  meals  he  had  per- 
sons racked  before  him  that  he  might  enjoy 
their  groans.  In  one  of  his  passionate  out- 
bursts he  exclaimed,  '^  Would  that  the  people 
of  Rome  had  a  single  neck,  that  I  might  dis- 
l^atch  them  at  a  blow!'' 

But  with  the  birth  of  new  decades,  the 
evaluation  placed  upon  man  as  man  by  the 
Son  of  God  became  the  possession  of  the 
wielders  of  imperial  authority.  Flavins, 
Vespasian,  Titus,  Trajan,  Hadrian,  Pius  An- 
toninus, and  Marcus  Aurelius  approximated 
measurably  Jesus'  doctrine  as  to  the  value  of 
man  in  their  guidance  of  the  Empire. 

These  wearers  of  the  purple  do  not  com- 
plete our  present-day  conception  of  the  Chris- 
tian sovereign,  but  that  they  were  govern- 
mental benefactors  rather  than  malefactors 
in  their  day,  impartial  critics  must  admit.  As 
the  Light  of  the  world,  Jesus  illumined  their 
moral  nature.  It  was  not  possible  for  the 
exceeding  brightness  of  the  Son  of  God  to 
be  concealed.    The  value  of  captives,  slaves, 


254        Jesus:  The  World  Teacher. 

and  every  man  classified  as  plebeian  and  as 
barbarian,  dawned  upon  the  minds  and  hearts 
of  political,  commercial,  and  social  posses- 
sors of  power.  The  common  good,  rather 
than  individual  indulgence,  became  the  all- 
consuming  passion.  The  world  came  into  the 
holding  of  a  new  objective. 

The  democracy,  the  proletariat,  the  com- 
monalty, in  the  light  of  all  historj^,  can  not 
do  otherwise  than  acknowledge  with  pro- 
foundest  gratitude  their  indebtedness  to 
Jesus  Christ.  As  Incarnate  Love,  Jesus  de- 
molished the  hoary  antipathies  which  nations 
and  races  had  harbored  against  each  other. 
The  Jew  found  felicity  in  designating  all 
Gentiles  as  dogs.  The  Gentiles  cordially  re- 
ciprocated the  repugnance. 

Not  many  decades  since,  a  rancorous  an- 
tagonism was  felt  by  the  European  toward 
the  Asiatic,  and  the  Asiatic  in  unmistakable 
vocables  made  known  his  animosity  toward 
the  European.  But  into  a  fraternity  Jesus  is 
rapidly  bringing  all  men.  The  brotherhood 
of  the  race  is  not  an  empty  figment.    It  is  in 


Innovation.  255 

perfect  agreement  with  the  purpose  of  the 
ages.  Individual  animosities  simply  can  not 
exist  when  Jesus  Christ  has  a  dwelling-place 
in  the  individual  heart.  And  the  individual 
is  the  miniature  paraphrase  of  humankind. 
Liberation  of  soul  is  the  work  of  Jesus  in 
individual  and  social  life.  He  it  is  who  has 
opened  the  doors  of  the  prison,  who  has 
brought  deliverance  to  the  captives,  and 
made  all  responsive  souls  free  through  the 
power  of  an  endless  life.  Time  and  sense 
are  no  longer  the  incarcerators  of  the  soul, 
and  space  is  no  longer  its  jail-yard.  Freedom 
from  the  grossness  of  sensual  passion,  free- 
dom from  the  siren  allurements  of  the  world, 
freedom  from  the  fatal  grip  of  moral  weak- 
ness, are  a  few  of  the  manifold  blessings 
which  Jesus  has  brought  to  humankind. 

He  who  believes  in  Jesus  Christ  shifts 
through  His  belief  the  center  of  moral 
gravity.  His  thoughts  find  in  God  their  be- 
ing. His  will  is  subordinated  to  the  Divine 
will.  His  affections  are  fixed  on  things  above, 
not  on  things  below.    He  is  a  new  man.    His 


256        Jesus:  The  World  Teacher. 

citizenship  is  in  the  heavenlies.     In  God  he 
lives,  he  moves,  he  has  his  being. 

As  the  introducer  of  newness  of  thought, 
newness  of  will,  newness  of  affection,  Jesus 
stands  alone.  He  is  unique.  In  Him  we  find 
righteousness,  in  Him  we  find  wisdom,  in 
Him  we  find  sanctification,  in  Him  we  find 
redemption.  He  alone  is  the  power  of  God. 
He  alone  is  the  wisdom  of  God.  He  is  the 
true  Innovator,  the  true  Reformer,  and  all 
worthy  newness,  and  all  permanent  reform, 
find  their  genesis  and  perpetuity  in  and 
through  His  spirit. 


Chapter  IX. 
MODERNNESS, 


17 


Jesus  Christ,  the  same  yesterday,  and  to-day,  and  forever. 
—PAUL. 

**  If  Jesus  Christ  is  a  man, 
And  only  a  man,  I  say 
That  of  all  mankind  I  cleave  to  Him, 
And  to  Him  will  I  cleave  alway. 

"  If  Jesus  Christ  is  a  God, 

And  the  only  God,  I  swear 
I  will  follow  Him  through  heaven  and  hell. 
The  earth,  the  sea,  and  the  air!" 

—RICHARD  WATSON  GILDER. 


MODEENNESS. 

I. 

The  present-day  reality  of  Jesus  Christ 
is  the  most  commandiiig  of  all  facts.  It  were 
easier  for  us  to  escape  from  our  shadow 
than  to  escape  His  perpetual  presence.  He 
is  indeed  transcendently  more  to  the  world 
to-day  than  in  any  aforetime  period.  He  con- 
tinuously convinces  us  of  His  superiority  to 
time  and  place. 

As  Jesus  of  Nazareth  He  entered  into  his- 
tory, as  did  Alexander,  Ambrose,  Pindar, 
Erasmus.  As  God  manifest  in  the  flesh,  as 
the  brightness  of  the  Father's  glory,  as  the 
Power  and  the  Wisdom  of  God,  as  the  Savior 
of  all  men.  He  has  been,  and  is,  believed  on, 
loved,  and  obeyed. 

This  consummation  in  itself  makes  impos- 
sible all  moral  evasiveness.  The  dominant 
question  in  every  candid  soul  who  lives  to-day 
is:  *^Lord,  what  wilt  Thou  have  me  to  do?" 


260         Jesus  :  The  World  Teacher. 

Our  individual  attitude  toward  Jesus  Christ 
brooks  less  of  indifferentism  than  does  any 
law  which  operates  in  the  material  and 
mental  spheres  of  being. 

As  a  transcendent  personality,  Jesus  pos- 
sesses more  of  ethical  and  spiritual  reality 
than  of  historic  actuality.  Historically,  He 
is  a  Jewish  peasant,  the  brother  of  James 
and  Joses,  a  prophet  in  succession  to  David, 
Moses,  Malachi,  Ezekiel,  appearing  under  the 
limitations  of  space,  time,  and  racial  homo- 
geneity. Ethically  and  spiritually,  however. 
He  is  inexpressibly  greater.  He  stands  for 
the  whole  order  of  legitimate  thought,  for  the 
sane  comprehension  of  the  universe,  for  the 
interpretation  of  God  and  man  in  their  mu- 
tual relatedness.  Logical  formulae  and  cir- 
cumscribed literary  criticism  are  not,  there- 
fore, capable  of  giving  form  and  content  to 
Jesus.  He  exceeds  immeasurably  their 
province.  The  facts  of  history  and  the  ulti- 
mate mysteries  of  being  alone  give  to  us  an 
approximate  interpretation  of  His  person- 
ality. 


MODERNNESS.  261 

Jesus  as  the  Eternal  Reason  made  flesh 
has  created  through  His  thought  and  life  a 
religion  which  absorbs  the  noblest  elements 
of  all  the  past,  and  is  the  most  potent  factor 
in  the  moral  and  intellectual  progress  of  the 
world.  He  can  not  from  any  angle  of  vision 
be  classified  as  a  particular  individual.  He 
stands  apart  from  Moses,  Isaiah,  Jeremiah, 
Plato,  Socrates,  Confucius,  Mohammed, 
Buddha.  He  is  organically  related  to  the 
whole  system  of  thought  and  experience. 
Born  in  the  Orient,  of  Oriental  blood,  bath- 
ing in  its  languid  sunshine,  nestling  in  the 
arms  of  its  soft  ether,  holding  converse  with 
the  traditions  of  His  own  people.  He  is  also 
an  Occidental  of  the  Occidentals.  To  the 
highest  selfhood  of  Melanchthon  the  Teuton, 
of  John  Knox  the  Scot,  of  John  Marshall  the 
Anglo-Saxon,  of  Pocahontas  the  American 
Indian,  He  was  bound  by  every  affiliation  of 
soul.  The  beauty  and  the  utility  of  all 
spheres  of  life  find  in  Him  an  inspiration, 
never  a  retardation.  Indeed,  what  of  govern- 
ment, commerce,  art,  invention,  reform,  edu- 


262         Jesus  :  The  World  Teacher. 

cation,  religion  that  is  granitic  in  quality  and 
beneficial  in  operation,  is  the  outflow  of 
Jesus '  nature.  He  is  the  soul  of  modernness. 
All  conception  and  all  action  that  have  in 
them  coherency  find  in  Him  their  inception. 

In  relation  to  all  post-Christian  history 
Jesus  stands  as  does  the  idea  of  God  toward 
all  nature.  Legitimate  metaphysics  conceives 
of  God  as  the  moving  factor  in  the  natural 
order.  Legitimate  ethics  conceives  of  Jesus 
as  the  primal  factor  in  the  moral  order.  The 
Son  of  God  can  not  be  thought  of  as  a  unit. 
He  is  the  whole.  He  can  not  be  thought  of  as 
an  individual.  He  is  the  human  race.  He  is 
not  a  moral  microcosm.  He  is  the  moral 
macrocosm. 

Wisdom,  therefore,  dictates  that  we  ad- 
just ourselves  to  the  word  and  work  of  Jesus. 
He  is  less  inescapable  than  are  the  laws  that 
underlie  all  physical  life.  To  treat  lightly 
the  significance  of  personality  as  involved  in 
and  evolved  from  Him  is  to  degrade  ourselves 
and  to  provoke  the  Divine  disfavor.  Our  life 
in  harmony  with  the  laws  of  physical  gravity, 


MODERNNESS.  263 

chemical  cohesion,  attraction,  repulsion,  is 
personality  expressed  in  material  terms.  In 
this  harmony  there  is  a  temporal  good.  It  is 
a  good  under  limitation.  It  is  of  the  earth, 
earthy.  Life  in  harmony  with  the  laws  of 
love,  of  truth,  of  righteousness,  as  personal- 
ized in  Jesus  Christ,  is  personality  expressed 
in  ethical  and  spiritual  terms. 

In  this  harmony  there  is  an  eternal  good. 
It  admits  of  no  circumscription.  It  is  of  the 
heavens,  heavenly.  Belief  in  the  Son  of  God 
is  an  adjustment  of  ourselves  to  all  law  as 
personalized  in  Him. 

II. 

Our  notion  of  God,  if  possessed  of  valid- 
ity, must  be  in  strict  coincidence  with  that  of 
Jesus.  Prior  to  the  Incarnation,  gods  were 
as  numerous  as  men.  Among  the  cultivated 
Greeks  and  worldly-wise  Eomans,  dreams 
had  more  meaning  than  either  observation  or 
experience.  The  sons  of  Abraham  had  be- 
come Deistic  in  their  conceptions  of  God.  In- 
terferences   with    the    natural    order    they 


264        Jesus  :  The  World  Teacher. 

ascribed  to  God.  The  ceaseless  ongoings  of 
all  physical  life  they  did  not  ascribe  to  God. 
To  nature  under  normal  conditions  they  gave 
a  self-sufficiency.  God  was  only  to  be  ob- 
served in  the  extraordinary,  the  astounding, 
the  apparently  anarchic.  A  false  naturalism 
as  a  terrifying  incubus  had  fastened  itself 
upon  their  thought.  We  are  not,  therefore, 
surprised  that  the  Jewish  populace  found 
mental  satiety  only  in  the  miracle  working 
of  Jesus. 

Jesus,  however,  stamped  the  extraordi- 
nary with  a  secondary  value.  God  working 
always  and  everywhere  was  His  primary  em- 
phasis. For  Him  all  life  was  supernatural 
in  the  sense  of  causality.  No  fact  is  more  pa- 
tent, both  in  speculation  and  experiment,  than 
that  thought  perishes  save  as  we  accept 
Jesus'  view-point.  Nature  as  an  independent, 
self-directing  order,  no  man  knows.  Nature 
as  the  embodied  order  of  Infinite  Wisdom  and 
Will,  as  a  system  in  which  ordinary  manifes- 
tations may  be,  and  are,  set  aside  when  higher 
ends  are  involved,  we  do  know.    Jesus  gave 


MODERNNESS.  265 

no  priority  to  sensuous  phenomena.  He  gave 
priority  always  to  free  and  conscious  intelli- 
gence, and  this  intelligence,  in  the  sense  of 
universal  efficiency,  he  denominated,  God. 

Hume's  famous  thesis  to  the  effect  that 
miracles  are  imjDossible  because  of  the  im- 
plied violation  of  natural  law,  and  are  incred- 
ible because  of  their  contradiction  of  human 
experience,  can  not  withstand  the  warfare 
waged  by  the  metaphysics  which  find  their 
genetic  being  in  the  mind  and  ministry  of  the 
Son  of  God.  Natural  law  per  se  is  ''a  false 
creation,  proceeding  from  a  heat-oppressed 
brain,''  while  human  experience  tis  related  to 
the  lower  economies  of  life  is  an  unceasing 
miracle.  Thought  can  find  no  place  for 
standing  if  nature  is  self -running,  sel-f -equal, 
self-sufficient.  The  automatic,  passive  regis- 
tration theory  of  mind  to  which  Hume  clung 
tenaciously,  collapses  when  brought  into  the 
complexities  of  every-day  life.  How  it  is  pos- 
sible for  the  human  mind  to  convert  crude 
iron  into  watch-springs,  electric  energy  into 
arc-lights,  dull  earth  into  master  paintings, 


266         Jesus  :  The  World  Teacher. 

the  entrails  of  a  sheep  into  the  melodious 
violin,  is  quite  beyond  us,  only  as  we  posit 
the  superiority  of  mind  to  matter  ? 

In  His  stress  of  moral  values  Jesus  gave 
to  the  ideal  order  of  life  an  abiding  and  prac- 
tical worth.  The  doctrine  of  Divine  imma- 
nence which  does  not  distinguish  between  the 
Infinite  manifestation  in  the  rock  stratum, 
the  globule  of  water,  in  the  pinion  of  the  bird 
and  the  Infinite  manifestation  in  the  human 
soul,  is  fatuous  and  unworthy  of  our  mental 
entertainment. 

The  Divine  wisdom  and  will  are  apparent 
in  every  moss,  cobweb,  crystalline  dewdrop, 
in  the  tawny  coat  of  the  wood-thrush,  in  the 
mastodonic  bulk  of  the  elephant,  in  the  iris- 
hued  beauty  of  the  orchid.  But  moral  dis- 
tinctions are  absent  in  these  forms  of  life, 
and  it  is  moral  distinction  only  which  gives 
to  the  ideal  an  abiding  and  practical  evalua- 
tion. 

Idealism  is  the  begetting  of  a  vain  fantasy 
if  alienated  from  the  moral  sphere  of  life. 
Too  much  of  credence  has  been  given  to  ideal 


MODERNNESS.  267 

conceptions  that  had  no  ethical  quality  within 
them.  Buddhism,  Mohammedanism,  The- 
osophy.  Christian  Science,  Pantheism,  Deism, 
Encyclopedism,  come  within  the  category  of 
fantastic  idealism. 

Deism  and  kindred  conceptions  invest 
necessity  with  rulership.  According  to  this 
conception,  John  Adams  and  Patrick  Henry, 
as  leading  actors  in  the  American  Revolution, 
were  moved  by  the  same  fixedness  of  law  that 
whirls  the  cloud  of  dust  in  a  tornado  and 
tosses  the  particles  of  water  in  a  tempest. 

The  mechanism  of  the  universe  is  so  in- 
flexible that  no  appreciable  ethical  difference 
exists  between  the  man  who  casts  himself 
from  an  Alpine  height  and  the  man  who  is 
hurled  to  the  rocks  below  by  another.  In  the 
one  instance  the  impulse  comes  from  within, 
and  in  the  other  from  without.  But  whether 
from  within  or  from  without,  it  is  necessity, 
and  therefore  no  moral  distinction  is  at 
issue. 

Christian  Science,  Pantheism,  and  similar 
modes  of  conceiving  the  universe  and  its  spir- 


268         Jesus:  The  World  Teacher. 

itual  relatedness,  are  outright  denials  of 
personality,  both  finite  and  Infinite.  God  is 
regarded  as  a  world-substance  rather  than 
a  first  and  ever-present  Cause.  He  is  one 
with  beasts,  with  birds,  with  stones,  with 
clay.  All  things  are  part  and  parcel  of  God. 
Sharers  they  are  in  the  Infinite  world-sub- 
stance. Man,  in  conjunction  with  machines 
and  with  mud,  participates  in  this  Infinite 
stuff.  All  finite  ignorance,  weakness,  sin,  and 
brutishness  are  removed  from  the  sphere  of 
responsibility  since  they  are  modes  of  the 
Divine  manifestation.  These  fantasies  make 
of  the  Divine  government  and  of  human  gov- 
ernment unspeakable  travesties.  When  what 
we  are  pleased  to  term  wrong-doing  occurs 
among  men  the  only  consistency  possible 
for  us,  if  these  vagaries  are  operative,  is  to 
accept  the  wrong-doing  as  the  method  chosen 
by  the  Infinite  world-substance  for  its  mani- 
festation. 

Christian  Science  vociferously  denies  any 
consanguinity  whatsoever  between  itself  and 
the   gross   atomism   of  Democritus,  but  all 


MODERNNESS.  269 

thought  that  demands  a  finality  readily  dis- 
cerns a  common  parentage.  Jesus  never 
blundered  in  such  a  fashion.  He  made  all 
life  in  its  intent  moral.  He  declared  that 
God,  the  Infinite  Thinker  and  Doer,  the 
Everlasting  Father,  was  the  most  deeply 
obligated  personality  of  the  universe;  that, 
transcending  the  metaphysical  aspect  of  life. 
He  was  intent  upon  making,  through  His  all- 
sufficient  grace  and  never-failing  love,  every 
son  and  daughter  of  humankind  the  reflectors 
of  His  holiness  and  the  executors  of  His 
benevolent  will.  And  man,  the  finite  per- 
sonality, He  declared  must  rightly  appraise 
the  Divine  purpose  and  work  in  enthusiastic 
co-operation  with  God. 

The  good  man,  Jesus  never  confounded 
with  the  criminal.  Between  Zaccheus  the 
philanthropist  and  Zaccheus  the  public  plun- 
derer He  saw  a  great  gulf  fixed.  As  God  in- 
carnate He  set  Himself  for  the  doing  of  good. 
As  God  incarnate  He  set  Himself  for  the 
overthrow  of  evil.  Eewards  causal  and  cir- 
cumstantial, He  averred,  were  the  heritage 


270         Jesus  :  The  World  Teacher. 

ordained  before  the  foundation  of  the  world 
for  all  workers  of  righteousness.  Penalties 
causal  and  circumstantial,  He  asserted,  were 
the  inevitable  resultants  of  the  working  of 
unrighteousness.  In  so  teaching,  the  man  of 
to-day  is  asked:  Did  Jesus  stultify  Himself? 
The  Wall  Street  broker,  the  State  Street 
banker,  the  Idaho  farmer,  the  British  com- 
moner, the  German  peasant,  the  American 
Kepublic,  the  Japanese  Empire,  thunderously 
answer.  No! 


III. 

In  His  freedom  from  petty  tactics  and 
worldly-wise  prudence  Jesus  integrates  Him- 
self across  the  centuries.  The  strategy 
displayed  by  Him  in  the  execution  of  His  life 
purpose  is  commanding. 

As  an  idealist  of  the  practical  order,  as 
the  Teacher  of  teachers,  He  dwelt  upon  and 
enforced  the  value  of  the  moral  sentiment, 
the  supremacy  of  spirit,  the  dynamism  of  per- 
sonality,   the    homogeneity    of    humankind. 


MODERNNESS.  271 

Prejudices,  partialities,  partisanships,  can 
not  withstand  the  antagonism  of  great  catho- 
lic convictions.  The  Jew  in  his  malevolence 
toward  the  Gentile,  the  aristocratic  antipathy 
to  all  forms  of  democracy,  the  haughty 
disdain  felt  by  the  patrician  for  the  plebeian, 
find  no  place  in  Jesus'  thought.  Love  for 
man  as-  man,  regardless  of  race,  color,  or 
place,  was  His  constant  word.  The  parable 
of  the  Good  Samaritan,  and  Jesus'  colloquy 
with  the  woman  of  Samaria  at  the  well  of 
Jacob,  are  illustrations  of  His  mental  and 
moral  attitude  toward  all  men.  The  inborn 
antipathy  of  the  pronounced  Jew  against  the 
mongrel-blooded  Samaritan,  the  Son  of  God 
did  not  harbor.  He  unfolded  God  as  the  God 
of  all  men.  The  crimson  currents  of  life 
which  speed  through  the  veins  and  arteries 
of  humankind  are  identical  in  their  constitu- 
ents. Eespect  for  Israel  as  opposed  to  Rome, 
for  America  as  opposed  to  China,  for  the 
red  man  as  opposed  to  the  black  man,  God 
does  not  entertain.  Jesus  declared  every 
man  to  be  a  social  center  from  whom  all  men 


272         Jesus:  The  World  Teacher. 

had  the  right  to  claim  fresh  and  nobler  im- 
pulses. 

In  all  men  sacred  and  heroic  attributes 
are  sleeping,  if  not  awake.  The  capacity  for 
high-souledness  inhered  in  the  slaves  of  the 
imperial  household  as  truly  as  in  Marcus 
Aurelius,  the  emperor.  A  worker  together 
with  God  is  latent  in  the  sanguinary  Moslem 
as  truly  as  in  the  self-immolating  Adoniram 
Judson. 

The  modernness  of  these  contentions 
admits  of  no  controversy.  The  Asiatic  is 
demonstrating  himself  to  be  in  agreement 
with  the  European  in  ethical  and  spiritual 
quality.  Joseph  Neesima,  the  Japanese 
Christian,  by  eveiy  conceivable  bond  is  a 
brother  beloved  to  William  E.  Gladstone,  the 
English  Christian.  Mr.  Wang  Chengpai,  the 
Chinese  believer  in  the  Christian  religion, 
proved  his  capacity  for  the  carrying  out  of 
God's  will  toward  men  no  less  than  the  most 
devoted  Christian  within  American  parallels. 
The  unity  of  all  men  Jesus  taught  and  exem- 
plified, and  our  ethical  and  spiritual  redemp- 


MODERNNESS.  273 

tion  is  conditioned  upon  our  acceptance  of 
His  word  and  reproduction  of  His  practice. 

Petty  tactics  in  the  religious  life  were  the 
adopted  measures  and  method  of  the  Jew, 
the  Greek,  of  the  Roman,  of  the  self-sufficers 
everywhere.  Jesus  repudiated  them.  He  was 
strategic  in  His  positions;  He  was  cosmic 
in  His  outlook;  He  was  all-inclusive  in 
His  spmpathies.  The  petty  Jew,  the  partial 
Greek,  the  self-sufficing  Eoman,  have  been 
securely  interred,  and  none  are  so  poor 
as  to  do  them  reverence.  In  shutting  the 
door  of  the  kingdom  of  heaven  against  otEers, 
we  ultimately  exclude  ourselves. 

The  present-day  conquest  of  the  heathen 
world,  in  the  name  of  and  through  the  spirit 
of  Jesus  Christ,  abundantly  establishes  the 
modernness  of  His  wisdom  and  mission. 
The  dynamic  quality  of  personality  Jesus 
stressed.  He  did  not  conceive  of  man  as  a 
passive  receptacle,  a  tabula  rasa,  a  bit  of 
mechanism  to  be  operated  by  sensation,  by 
custom,  by  playful  or  obtreperous  atoms;  a 
jack-in-the-box   to  be   manipulated  by  fan- 

18 


274        Jesus:  The  World  Teacher. 

tastic  impersonalisms.  He  conceived  of  man 
as  the  personal  articulation  of  love,  truth, 
goodness.  The  mechanical  philosophy  of  life 
He  decried.  Thought,  will,  emotion.  He  de- 
clared to  be  transcendently  more  than  excited 
nerve-centers,  or  faculties  ancestrally  com- 
municated. 

He  saw  in  man  self-determination,  self- 
consciousness,  self-activity.  He  did  not 
enunciate  great  truths,  vainly  expecting  them 
to  propagate  themselves.  He  called  twelve 
men  unto  Himself.  They  appropriated  His 
exceeding  wisdom.  Subsequent  to  this  ap- 
propriation He  sent  them  throughout  the 
Jewish  and  Roman  worlds,  and  from  thence 
to  the  uttermost  part  of  the  earth.  His  com- 
mand was:  '^Go  teach  all  nations;"  ^^Go  ye 
and  preach  the  gospel  to  every  creature." 
He  saw  in  Peter,  in  John,  in  Thomas,  in 
Philip,  and  others  of  the  apostolic  body,  a 
dynamism  that  would  renew  the  earth  in 
righteousness.  And  this  moving  force  He 
discerns  in  every  responsive  personality. 
Christianity  alone,  of  all  religious  systems, 


MODERNNESS.  275 

has  given  to  the  iDersonality  of  man  its  true 
value.  Man  static  it  renounces.  Man  dy- 
namic it  affirms. 

IV. 

Jesus  was  not  an  iconoclast  in  the  popular 
acceptation  of  the  term.  He  was  an  icono- 
clast in  the  sense  of  destroying  all  form  that 
was  insufficient  for  the  content.  Judaism  as 
a  worn  bottle  could  not  contain  the  new  wine 
of  the  gospel.  As  a  doctrinal  conception  it 
was  of  value  in  the  early  twilight  of  the  race. 
But  with  the  fullness  of  life  which  Jesus 
brought  to  the  world,  Judaism,  as  a  mode  of 
conceiving  God  and  the  universe,  lapsed  into 
desuetude.  Greek  polytheism  had  function- 
alized  itself  in  a  somewhat  luminous  fashion 
in  the  |3eriod  of  man's  moral  ignorance,  but 
with  the  dawning  of  the  Sun  of  Eighteous- 
ness,  the  Brightness  of  the  Father's  Glory, 
it  speedily  withdrew  into  obscurity. 

And  the  same  destiny  has  overtaken  every 
metaphysical  and  ethical  form  that  was  in- 
sufficient for  the  content.    God  and  His  truth, 


276         Jesus  :  The  World  Teacher. 

as  related  to  man  and  the  world,  could  not 
find  full  vocalization  in  Judaic  legalism  or 
Greek  polytheism.  Nor  can  ceremony  or 
tradition  fully  vocalize  the  Infinite  Person- 
ality and  His  Infinite  relatedness.  Larger 
generalizations  are  needed  than  are  afforded 
by  impersonalism,  natural  apotheoses,  ritual- 
ism, or  oral  transmission. 

Dogmatism  Jesus  never  failed  to  rend  to 
chips  and  splinters.  He  could  not  tolerate 
the  ethical  fixtures,  the  spiritual  termini, 
which  the  pseudo  religionists  of  His  day 
sought  to  establish.  He  knew  the  world  to  be 
saturated  with  God  and  His  law.  He  was 
unwilling  for  any  man  or  body  of  men  to 
declare  it  otherwise.  Of  life  in  colossal  re- 
lations He  was  always  mindful.  He  did  not 
permit  the  hours  to  exalt  themselves  above 
the  years,  the  decades  to  pronounce  strictures 
concerning  the  centuries,  the  centuries  to 
cast  indignities  upon  the  millennia.  He  en- 
couraged men,  always  and  everywhere,  to 
resist  the  usui-pation  of  particulars,  to  pene- 
trate to  the  catholic  sense  of  all  thought  and 


MODERNNESS.  277 

experience.  God,  He  affirmed,  puts  to  con- 
fusion the  misdirections  of  human  thinking 
and  doing,  and,  despite  the  train  of  felonies 
which  the  immediate  past  and  living  present 
may  present  to  our  eye,  the  ends  of  truth, 
of  rectitude,  of  altruism,  are  finally  answered. 
The  prophet  was  not  making  the  circumfer- 
ence his  focus  of  vision,  but  the  center,  when 
he  asserted,  '^Surely  the  wrath  of  man  shall 
praise  Him;  the  remainder  of  wrath  shalt 
Thou  restrain."  No  truth  was  more  fre- 
quently uttered  in  substance  by  the  Son  of 
God  than  this:  ''The  Lord  reigneth;  let  the 
earth  rejoice:  let  the  multitude  of  isles  be 
glad  thereof.  Clouds  and  darkness  [often- 
times] are  round  about  Him;  [nevertheless] 
righteousness  and  judgment  are  the  habita- 
tion of  His  throne.'' 

Through  all  days,  all  years,  all  centuries ; 
through  all  agents,  even  though  malignant; 
through  all  forces,  physical  and  moral; 
through  all  atoms;  through  all  peoples,  a 
great   and   beneficent    tendency   irresistibly 


278        Jesus  :  The  World  Teacher. 

streams.  No  human  invention  can  withstand 
it.  Racial  oppositions  to  it  are  overcome 
with  as  much  ease,  apparently,  as  is  indi- 
vidual opposition. 

Hence  we  are  not  made  to  drink  of  the 
wine  of  astonishment  when  doctrinal  con- 
ceptions appear  and  disappear  like  the  grass 
of  the  field,  which  to-day  is,  and  to-morrow 
is  cast  in  the  oven. 

Platonism  as  a  conception  was  too  meager 
to  contain  the  fullness  of  God  and  its  signifi- 
cance for  men.  The  notions  of  Heraclitus, 
Democritus,  Thales,  Pythagoras,  Aristotle, 
and  other  Greek  speculators,  were  meta- 
physically straitened.  Hedonism,  Stoic- 
ism, Utilitarianism,  Categorical  Intuition- 
ism,  are  ethically  perplexed  on  every  side. 
Augustinianism,  Calvinism,  Pelagianism, 
Sabellianism,  Socinianism,  and  some  Armin- 
ian  conceptions,  are  straitened  media  for 
the  forthsetting  of  the  Divine  will  and  work. 
No  aspiring  soul  finds  itself  willing  to  ac- 
knowledge allegiance  to  any  theological  or 
philosophical  system  which  does  not  give  root 


MODERNNESS.  279 

and   room   to   God,   the   All-Wise,   the   All- 
Efficient,  the  All-Fair,  the  All-Loving. 

But  every  worker  of  good,  every  lover  of 
truth,  every  seeker  after  God,  finds  himself 
or  herself  responsive  to  any  and  every  con- 
ception which  approximately  contains  the 
doctrine  of  the  Divine  will  and  work,  and 
allows  scope  for  its  ever-increasing  signifi- 
cance. 

V. 

The  perennial  modernness  of  Jesus  is  evi- 
dent in  His  appreciation  of  moral  wholeness. 
The  greatest  of  ethicists  and  religionists  have 
broken  life  into  multitudinous  mites.  Men 
and  women,  of  low  estate  and  high,  have 
ever  been  prone  to  fractionalize  themselves. 
We  do  not  address  our  thought  and  energy 
to  the  work  of  self-completeness.  We  are 
farmers,  or  merchants,  or  mechanics,  or  stu- 
dents, or  housewives,  but  not  integrated  per- 
sonalities. The  man  is  absorbed  by  the  mer- 
chant, the  mechanic,  the  student.  Our  crea- 
tion is  a  calling,  a  vocation.    Our  daily  work 


280        Jesus:  The  World  Teacher. 

is  a  pursuit,  an  avocation.  Every  man  is 
called  of  God  to  incarnate  love,  truth,  good- 
ness; to  embody  the  kingdom  of  heaven;  to 
complete  himself.  Our  avocation  may  be  the 
tilling  of  the  soil,  the  fashioning  of  machines, 
the  construction  of  railways,  the  solution  of 
mathematical  problems,  the  writing  of  books. 
Jesus  protested  against  the  man  scattering 
himself.  Manhood  and  womanhood,  accord- 
ing to  Jesus,  are  the  desiderata  of  all  legiti- 
mate thought  and  energy.  They  are  the  only 
accomplishment  worthy  of  the  endowment 
and  effort  of  the  human  family. 

Good  farmers,  skillful  mechanics,  are  good 
hands  and  feet,  but  nothing  more,  if  love, 
truth,  and  righteousness  are  lacking.  Bril- 
liant jurists,  scientific  experimenters,  if 
minus  moral  and  spiritual  integrity,  are  good 
brain-cells,  but  pauperized  men.  Jesus  de- 
clared the  world  to  be  God's  world,  and  men 
and  women  are  the  Divinely  appointed  stew- 
ards of  His  manifold  grace.  This  steward- 
ship must  be  fully  discharged,  whether 
through  the  media  of  medicine,  of  art,   of 


MODERNNESS.  281 

education,  of  mercantilism,  of  manual  labor. 
All  life  is  to  find  expression  in  sacred  speech 
and  in  pious  performance.  What  in  limitary 
language  we  term  the  secular,  is  the  vanity 
of  vanities.  It  is  not  rooted  in  the  nature  of 
God's  universe.  It  is  of  lunacy  all  compact. 
The  integration  of  our  selfhood  is  the 
primal  duty  of  life.  To  God's  will  concern- 
ing us  and  our  fellows  we  must  relate  our 
thinking,  our  willing,  our  doing.  This  is  in 
every-day  speech,  concentration.  In  sacred 
speech  it  is  consecration.  It  is  the  antithesis 
of  selfishness.  It  is  accepting  the  Divine 
intention  as  the  sum  of  wisdom.  It  is  life 
finding  its  completeness  in  God.  It  is  the 
regnancy  of  the  spiritual. 

VI. 

In  His  appraisement  of  all  material  mani- 
festation as  symbolic  of  spirit  and  its  phe- 
nomena Jesus  gave  to  us  the  true  basis  of 
scientific  development.  The  growth  of  scien- 
tific knowledge  is  in  strict  proportion  to  the 
dominance  of  Jesus'  evaluation  of  material 


282         Jesus  :  The  World  Teacher. 

]ife.  The  progress  of  science  is  practically 
nil  wherever  spirit  is  subordinated  to  matter. 
Sensuous  ascendency  invariably  means  scien- 
tific paralysis.  Superficiality  of  spiritual  life 
has  as  its  consequent  superficiality  of  scien- 
tific life.  The  earth,  the  stars,  chemical 
elements,  physics,  biology,  and  all  other 
realms  of  knowledge,  are  absolutel)^  uninter- 
pretable  if  we  regard  them  as  self -existent. 
They  assume  a  defiant  attitude,  apparently, 
if  we  deny  their  spiritual  genesis  and  preser- 
vation. They  seem  to  say  to  us  with  great 
gusto,  we  are  the  externizations  of  free  and 
conscious  intelligence.  We  are  the  retinue 
of  Infinite  personality.  We  are  the  goings 
forth  of  God. 

Mr.  Emerson  in  his  essay,  ^^The  Poet,'^ 
remarks :  ' '  Science  always  goes  abreast  with 
the  just  elevation  of  the  man,  keeping  step 
with  religion  and  metaphysics;  the  state  of 
science  is  an  index  of  our  self-knowledge. 
Since  everything  in  nature  answers  to  a 
moral  force,  if  any  phenomenon  remains 
brute  and  dark,  it  is  that  the  corresponding 


MODERNNESS.  283 

faculty  in  the  observer  is  not  yet  active." 
Jesus  in  His  interpretation  of  nature  saw 
the  whole  sense  of  life  in  every  individual 
thing.  The  net  cast  into  the  sea  entangling 
in  its  meshes  fish  of  every  kind,  the  bit  of 
leaven  working  its  way  through  the  mass  of 
meal,  the  infinitesimal  mustard-seed  expand- 
ing itself  into  a  tree,  were  to  Him  the  hiero- 
phants  of  a  Divine  revelation. 

Eliminate  this  Divineness,  and  the  highest 
incentive  to  the  interpretation  and  subjection 
of  the  physical  world  is  withdrawn.  The  wis- 
dom and  will  of  God  Jesus  saw  signified  in 
the  lowest  as  truly  as  in  the  highest 
economies  of  being,  and  His  all-inclusive 
vision  has  given  newness  of  life  to  the  intel- 
lectual world.  In  knowing  our  Father's 
world  we  are  entering  all  the  more  com- 
pletely into  a  knowledge  of  Him  and  His 
disposition  toward  us.  And  our  knowledge 
of  God,  through  reverence,  humility,  and 
obedience,  never  fails  to  beget  within  us  a 
consuming  desire  to  know  His  world.  The 
parabolic  teaching  of  Jesus  has  been  a  factor 


284         Jesus  :  The  World  Teacher. 

of  incalculable  worth  to  tlie  progress  of  all 
thought.  Beyond  the  utility  and  beauty  of 
things  He  discerned  the  efficiency  and  the 
beauty  of  spirit. 

He  gave  to  the  phenomenal  world  an  in- 
cidental value.  He  gave  to  the  spiritual 
world  a  fundamental  value.  To  the  world  of 
His  day  and  to  the  world  of  the  present  He 
asserts  that  the  supremacy  of  the  spiritual, 
and  that  supremacy  alone,  inspires  to  the 
mastery  of  the  incidental.  Mohammedanism, 
Buddhism,  Confucianism,  Hinduism,  Shin- 
toism,  and  materialistic  philosophies,  are  to 
us  ominous  examples  of  the  inability  of 
sensuousness  to  interpret  and  utilize  sense 
phenomena.  Electric  energy,  atmospheric 
vibration,  water  and  its  possible  transmuta- 
tions, iron,  coal,  lead,  timber,  grain,  the  soil, 
the  sunbeams,  have  slight  significance  for 
non-Christian  peoples.  But  Christianity  in- 
terpreting and  magnifying  the  spiritual  pro- 
ceeds forthwith  to  interpret  and  helpfully 
utilize  all  sensuous  phenomena. 

The  Christian  nations  lead  the  world  in 


MODERNNESS.  285 

its  material  no  less  than  in  its  moral  prog- 
ress. *^The  measure  of  merit  of  any  work 
of  art, ' '  says  a  critic  of  luminous  discrimina- 
tion, ^'is  its  perpetual  modernness."  Apply- 
ing this  principle  to  the  wisdom  of  Jesus, 
our  conclusion  is:  He  is  the  Light  of  the 
world;  He  is  Incarnate  Truth;  He  is  the 
Practical  Idealist;  He  is  the  World  Teacher; 
He  is  the  Modern  of  moderns. 


Chapter  X. 
EPILOGUE. 


*•  Whatsoever  a  man  soweth  that  shall  he  also  reap.  For 
he  that  soweth  to  his  flesh  shall  of  the  flesh  reap  corruption ; 
but  he  that  soweth  to  the  Spirit  shall  of  the  Spirit  reap  life 
everlasting."  — PAUL. 

In  the  world  about,  true  values  are 
No  less  in  stone  than  in  the  star; 
We  can  not  say  of  fleecy  cloud, 
Of  wilderness  or  city  crowd 
That  justice  with  her  beam  is  blind, 
That  things  or  men  are  not  of  kind. 

No  truth  is  patent  more  than  this. 
Works  compensation  not  amiss ; 
But  'spite  of  sun  or  rain  or  frost 
Its  metes  and  bounds  are  never  lost; 
Whate'er  may  be  our  ruling  plan, 
We  can  not  thwart  its  good  or  ban. 

Life,  as  a  unit,  thwarts  all  ruth, 
Its  genesis  and  soul  is  truth ; 
It  cries  aloud  in  street  and  mart 
That  no  one  thing  is  merely  part ; 
That  wisdom  makes  the  world  a  whole. 
And  compensation  is  its  soul. 


EPILOGUE. 

I. 

There  is  a  fortunate  and  fatal  snreness 
in  the  working  of  all  natural  law.  Fool- 
hardy, indeed,  is  the  man  who  interposes 
himself  between  the  law  of  gravity  and  its 
appointed  office. 

He  who  essays  the  building  of  a  structure 
without  a  strict  regard  for  the  center  of 
gravity  announces  himself  either  as  a  sense- 
less adventurer  or  as  a  hopeless  fool.  The 
man  of  commendable  judgment  will  not  set 
his  face  like  a  flint  against  the  law  of  chem- 
ical combination.  He  knows  that  under 
normal  conditions  an  affinity  exists  between 
his  muscles  and  nutritious  meat,  between  his 
blood  and  wholesome  bread,  but  that  prussic 
acid,  putrid  food,  and  intoxicating  drinks  are 
hostile  to  his  body^s  weal.  We  protect  our- 
selves against  ^'the  icy  fang  and  churlish 
19  289 


290         Jesus  :  The  World  Teacher. 

chiding  of  the  winter's  wind''  for  the  reason 
that  between  our  exposed  physical  members 
and  the  law  of  crystallization  but  few  points 
of  tangency  exist.  It  has  not  pleased  God,  in 
the  outworking  of  His  Infinite  plan,  to  sub- 
mit His  measures  and  methods  to  us.  Such 
a  procedure  would  be  the  reversal  of  His 
nature.  Always  and  everywhere  the  finite  is 
in  subordination  to  the  Infinite. 

Our  highest  wisdom  is  found  in  our  sub- 
mission to  God's  wisdom  and  way.  Every 
law  which  underlies  the  life  of  the  body  and 
the  spirit  is  promotive  of  our  inward  peace 
and  outward  fortune.  In  scientific  as  truly 
as  in  prophetic  speech,  in  the  realm  of  matter 
as  truly  as  in  the  realm  of  the  soul,  God  has 
beset  us  behind  and  before,  and  laid  His 
hand  upon  us.  If  we  ascend  up  into  heaven, 
behold.  He  is  there;  if  we  make  our  bed  in 
the  grave,  behold.  He  is  there ;  if  we  take  the 
wings  of  the  morning  and  dwell  in  the  utter- 
most parts  of  the  sea,  even  there  shall  His 
hand  lead  us  and  His  right  hand  hold  us. 
We  can  not,  if  we  would,  mechanize  the  uni- 


Epilogue.  291 

verse.  Sound  thinking  and  rationalized 
living  render  impossible  such  an  ultimation. 
And  yet  we  metamorphose  all  life  into  a  huge 
mechanism,  with  its  pitiless  wheels  and  thun- 
dering hammers,  when  we  obliterate  God  our 
Father  and  the  Supreme  Reason,  the  Ever- 
Efficient  Will,  from  any  phase  of  thought  or 
experience.  It  is  the  Divine  intent  that 
nature  should  be  for  us  an  inexhaustible 
benefactor. 

Nature,  ^  ^  red  in  tooth  and  claw, ' '  is  poetic 
fiction  under  normal  conditions.  Under  ab- 
normal conditions  it  is  a  tragic  fact.  The 
only  man  who  feels  oppressively  the  hand  of 
nature  is  he  who  seeks  to  subvert  the  laws 
that  underlie  all  being.  The  man  of  industry, 
of  honor,  of  expertness,  of  truthfulness,  of 
sobriety,  never  arraigns  nature  as  a  male- 
factor. Over  him  is  wielded,  not  the  scepter 
of  wrath,  but  of  love.  It  is  the  sluggard, 
the  trickster,  the  falsifier,  the  pettifogger, 
who  declaim  against  the  laws  that  underlie 
all  life.  All  things  in  God's  world  assume 
a  hostile  front  to  vice.    Virtue  and  gravita- 


292         Jesus  :  The  World  Teacher. 

tion,  love  and  cohesion,  truth  and  crystalliza- 
tion, present  invincible  phalanxes  against  all 
forms  of  lawlessness.  The  stars  in  their 
courses  fought  against  Sisera,  Canaan's 
military  chieftain.  And  why?  Because 
Sisera,  as  the  oppressor  of  Israel,  was  the 
sworn  antagonist  of  the  stars.  The  uni- 
verse is  a  unit  in  the  punishment  of  evil- 
doers. Corruptionists,  whether  in  commerce, 
in  politics,  in  literature,  in  art,  can  not  secure 
the  mermaid's  head  without  the  dragon's 
tail. 

The  fancy  of  the  Greeks  that  Nemesis  is 
the  ever-open  eye  throughout  the  universe, 
and  allows  no  offense  against  goodness  to  go 
unchastised,  is  a  solemn  fact,  expressed  in 
positive  terms  by  the  immanent,  ever-work- 
ing God  through  the  medium  of  law.  Infinite 
righteousness  can  not  wink  at  finite  unright- 
eousness and  maintain  its  integrity.  The 
world  of  sense  and  spirit  is  a  whole,  and 
refuses  to  be  disparted.  We  can  not  act 
partially.  We  must  act  integrally.  The 
pleasures  of  appetite  and  passion  can  not  be 


Epilogue.  293 

severed  from  the  needs  of  cliaracter.    All 
vision,  all  detachment,  find  themselves  coun- 
teracted.   Life  is  an  entirety  or  it  is  immoral 
and  meaningless. 

Adventurers,  exploiters,  profligates,  and 
misers  find  no  permanent  gain  in  their  en- 
deavors to  outgeneral  God.  '^Pleasure  is 
taken  out  of  pleasant  things,  profit  out  of 
profitable  things,  power  out  of  strong  things, 
the  moment  we  seek  to  separate  them  from 
the  whole.  We  can  no  m.ore  halve  things  and 
get  the  sensual  good  by  itself  than  we  can 
get  an  inside  that  shall  have  no  outside,  or  a 
light  without  a  shadow. ' '  The  braggart,  with 
the  brazen  throat  of  Hector,  may  assert  that 
the  inevitable  conditions  of  life  do  not  touch 
him ;  that  he  eats,  drinks,  and  is  merry  under 
all  suns  and  in  all  seasons;  that  he  sails  all 
seas  without  regard  for  chart  or  compass; 
that  he  traverses  all  lands  without  respect 
for  the  beaten  path  of  law.  But  the  boast  is 
on  the  braggart's  lips;  the  conditions  are  in 
his  soul. 

Retribution  can  not  be  eluded.    Causally 


294         Jesus  :  The  World  Teacher. 

it  is  present  upon  the  instant  of  our  misde- 
meanor. The  malignity  and  the  falsehood 
within  us  are  our  decease  from  the  whole- 
ness of  the  moral  universe.  Through  tem- 
poral limitation  circumstantial  retribution 
may  be  baffled.  But  the  escape  of  judgment 
in  visible  nature  does  not  imply  the  perpetual 
slow-footedness  of  the  circumstance.  Within 
the  matrix  of  the  future  the  time  is  when  the 
revolter  against  the  cosmic  order  of  life  will 
find  himself  fronting  the  ''stunning  confuta- 
tion of  his  nonsense'^  in  the  presence  of 
angels  and  of  men. 

Jesus  gives  to  us,  in  the  parable  of  the 
Eich  Man  and  Lazarus  the  Beggar,  a  graphic 
portrayal  of  such  a  scene.  The  man  of  af- 
fluence perversely  blinded  himself  as  to  the 
meaning  of  his  membership  in  the  social 
body.  The  beggar  ostensibly  was,  despite  his 
material  disadvantages,  loyal  to  the  Divine 
intent  of  being.  Causal  retribution  and  re- 
ward were  immediate.  The  rich  man  carried 
within  himself  his  decease  from  the  benefac- 
tions of  nature,  and  thus  "benighted  walked 


Epilogue.  295 

under  the  midday  sun. ' '  The  beggar  carried 
within  himself  the  consciousness  of  his  moral 
unity  with  the  Divine  aim,  and  thus  '*  enjoyed 
bright  day  within  the  center. ' ' 

Circumstantial  retribution  and  reward 
were  deferred.  But  death,  the  democratizer 
of  all  existence,  introduced  the  rich  man  and 
the  beggar  to  the  completed  order  of  life. 
Within  this  order  all  thoughts  and  acts  with- 
out exception  find  their  integration. 

Cause  and  circumstance,  says  Jesus,  in 
substance,  meet  each  other.  Their  delayed 
union  they  effect.  ^^In  hell  the  rich  man 
lifted  up  his  eyes,  being  in  torments,  and  saw 
Abraham  afar  off,  and  Lazarus  in  his 
bosom;  and  he  said,  Father  Abraham,  have 
mercy  on  me,  and  send  Lazarus  that  he  may 
dip  the  tip  of  his  finger  in  water  and  cool 
my  tongue;  for  I  am  tormented  in  this  flame. 
But  Abraham  said,  Son,  remember  that  thou 
in  thy  lifetime  receivedst  thy  [circumstan- 
tial] good  things,  and  likewise  Lazarus 
[circumstantial]   evil  things;  but  now  he  is 


296         Jesus  :  The  World  Teacher. 

[in  circumstance]   comforted,  and  tliou  art 
[in  circumstance]  tormented.'* 

To  complete  ourselves,  to  become  factors 
of  value  in  the  social  scheme  of  life,  to  em- 
body all  law,  to  reproduce  the  Divine  will  and 
work,  to  deport  ourselves  under  every  condi- 
tion and  in  every  circumstance  as  sons  and 
daughters  of  God,  is  our  manifest  and  essen- 
tial duty.  As  Paul  avows,  it  is  our  reason- 
able service.  To  encompass  these  ends,  even 
measurably,  is  to  be  in  league  with  the  un- 
derlying principles  of  God's  world;  to  be  in 
correspondence  with  all  benefaction.  To 
withhold  our  endeavor  is  to  revolt  against 
the  fundamental  laws  of  life  and  antagonize 
all  benefaction. 

II. 

Jesus,  as  the  Incarnate  Son  of  God,  per- 
sonalized in  Himself  all  law. 

The  laws  underlying  the  physical  universe 
He  spiritualized  in  that  He  made  them  His 
servants  unto  righteousness.  The  laws  un- 
derlying the  spiritual  universe  He  practical- 


Epilogue.  297 

ized  in  that  His  union  with  and  knowledge  of 
G-od,  His  inapproachable  purity,  His  Infinite 
love,  His  inviolable  truthfulness,  became  will- 
ing and  joyous  helpers  to  all  souls,  whether 
sinning  or  sorrowing,  aspiring  or  achieving. 
In  His  body^s  behalf  He  utilized  with  the 
utmost  remove  from  censure  every  physical 
regulation.  He  declared  His  body  to  be  the 
true  temple  of  worship,  and  He  made  all  ma- 
terial good  contribute  to  its  strength  and 
service;  His  mind  and  heart,  for  their  own 
refinement  and  for  the  increase  of  personal 
efficiency,  laid  hold  of  prayer,  of  faith,  of 
obedience,  of  service,  of  jjurified  emotion,  in- 
deed of  every  principle  appointed  for  the 
development  of  the  individual  spiritual  na- 
ture. 

As  the  integration  of  moral  and  spiritual 
efficiency,  as  the  Divine  Reason  made  flesh, 
as  the  Supreme  Will  in  all  the  realms  of  be- 
ing, as  Law  personalized,  as  the  dominating 
Personality  in  all  history,  and  therefore  in 
all  individual  life,  Jesus  removes  Himself 
infinitely  from  the  category  of  the  finite. 


298        Jesus:  The  World  Teacher. 

And  yet  He  is  bone  of  our  bone,  and  flesh  of 
our  flesh.  He  can  be  touched  with  a  feeling 
of  our  infirmities.  He  is  the  Friend  who 
loveth  at  all  times,  the  Brother  who  is  bom 
for  adversity.  As  Horace  Bushnell  elo- 
quently and  inspiringly  writes:  "This  one 
perfect  character  has  come  into  our  world 
and  lived  in  it ;  filling  all  the  molds  of  action, 
all  the  terms  of  duty  and  love,  with  His  own 
Divine  manners,  works,  and  charities.  All 
the  conditions  of  our  life  are  raised  thus,  by 
the  meaning  He  has  shown  to  be  in  them,  and 
the  grace  He  has  put  upon  them.  The  world 
itself  is  changed,  and  is  no  more  the  same 
that  it  was.  Let  the  Dark  Ages  come;  let 
society  roll  backward,  and  churches  perish 
in  whole  regions  of  the  earth;  let  infidelity 
deny,  and,  what  is  worse,  let  spurious  piety 
dishonor  the  truth ;  still  there  is  a  something 
here  that  was  not,  and  a  something  that  has 
immortality  in  it.  Still  our  confidence  re- 
mains unshaken,  that  Christ  and  His  ail- 
quickening  life  are  in  the  world  as  fixed  ele- 
ments, and  will  be  to  the  end  of  time;  for 


Epilogue.  299 

Christianity  is  not  so  much  the  advent  of  a 
better  doctrine  as  of  a  perfect  character ;  and 
how  can  a  perfect  character,  once  entered 
into  life  and  history,  be  separated  and  finally 
expelled?  It  were  easier  to  untwist  all  the 
beams  of  light  in  the  sky,  separating  and  ex- 
punging one  of  the  colors,  than  to  get  the 
character  of  Jesus,  which  is  the  real  gospel, 
out  of  the  world.'' 

And  now  what  shall  be  our  disposition 
toward  Him  who  has  made  all  life  other  than 
it  was;  who  has  exalted  the  significance  of 
God  for  man,  and  of  man  for  God ;  who  has, 
by  His  own  clear  shining,  dissipated  the 
world's  spiritual  darkness;  who  has  made  the 
tragedy  of  man's  cheapness  an  approaching 
impossibility  in  all  parallels ;  who  has  quick- 
ened incomputably  human  thought,  and  has- 
tened the  world's  progress  in  every  circle  of 
activity ;  who  has  renewed  the  waste  places  of 
the  human  heart,  and  made  them  to  blossom 
like  the  rose;  who,  in  Himself,  has  exempli- 
fied all  truth,  all  beauty,  all  good;  who  has 
effected  a  union  in  Himself  between  man  the 


300         Jesus:  The  World  Teacher. 

sinner  and  God  the  Savior,  between  man  the 
helpless  and  God  the  Almighty  Helper;  who 
even  now,  in  the  minutiag  and  in  the  most  bur- 
densome of  our  experiences,  interposes  His 
infinite  wisdom,  power,  and  love? 

He  calls  us  to  a  life  of  belief  in  His  name ; 
to  a  life  expressed  in  His  terms  which  are 
the  terms  of  the  spirit.  This  life  means  for  us 
righteousness,  peace,  and  joy  in  the  Holy 
Ghost.  It  means  for  us  a  conscience  void  of 
offense  toward  God  and  toward  men.  It 
means  our  completeness.  Surely  we  are  not 
hesitant  in  giving  to  Him  the  total  energy 
of  our  being  with  utmost  leal-heartedness ! 


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